Of Handcuffs and Singing Cats and True, True Love
by Rhianwen
Summary: [Chapter 15 now uploaded!] Zidane and co. attend an act by a frightfully bad sleight-of-hand artist, and Amarant and Freya regret it very strongly. Okay; it's a romance now!
1. Pick Them, Cat Man!

Of Handcuffs and Singing Cats and True, True Love  
  
By Snugglekitty, a.k.a. Yezo the Yellow Priest  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these people…except for the tavern owner...and the bouncy young man...and the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles (aside from the name, which belongs either to T.S. Elliot or Andrew Lloyd Webber – I forget)...and the man with the jaunty green hat...and the mention of the unseen Miriam. Squaresoft owns everyone else. Except Lina (the psychotic redhead), Amelia (the girl in white), Zelgadis (the angry chimera), and Gourry (the blond swordsman). These are all owned by the guy who created Slayers.  
  
Ah, yes. And the title was kind of a play on a Road to Avonlea novel: Of Corsets and Secrets and True, True Love  
  
Author's Notes: Okay, one thing that has been known to really aggravate people about my writing (aside from it's obviously low quality, of course – kidding. I like to think I'm good…) is the fact that it sort of takes place in a continuum of its own. And this story is no exception. It really doesn't fit in anywhere in the actual timeline of the game...or even some imagined idea of what came after. If this is something that you as a reader really can't stand, you might want to turn back now. Although my amazing and impeccable wit and sense of characterization (hah-hah) might be enough to remove the sting of a story that fits in nowhere, it also may not, and I don't handle flames very well. Calm, rational, clear, helpful criticism, yes, but flames make me ridiculously depressed. Except for the ones that contain atrocious spelling and grammar. Those are amusing in their irony. I have fun correcting those flames. :o)  
  
Oh, yes. Flames, as always, may be sent to the_pyre42@hotmail.com  
  
And now, as I am wont to say, oooooooooooooooooooon with the show!  
  
  
  
"If this is what comes of your bright ideas, Zidane, remind me never, ever to along with one again," Freya requested angrily, stalking from the remains of a very typical tavern, situated in a very typical, non-descript, and as such, unnamed town. Amarant, given little choice in the matter, followed, grumbling some very choice words to himself about what he would have done to the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles, had said Mr. Mistoffeles be still been alive  
  
"Aw, c'mon, Freya!" Zidane protested. "It isn't all my fault!"  
  
"Not all your fault?!" she repeated incredulously. "I ask you, who volunteered us to go up there?"  
  
"Well…the guy might have picked you anyway," Zidane countered weakly.  
  
"No, the 'Magical Mr. Mistoffeles' would not have even noticed us, had you not made it a point to call out 'Pick them, cat-man! Pick them!'"  
  
"I thought it would be fun!"  
  
"Well, your idea of fun is just a little bit worrisome," the young woman informed him, glaring coldly. Zidane sighed. Then he addressed the red- haired man.  
  
"C'mon, Amarant! Help me out here!"  
  
"Help you out, like hell! If I weren't HANDCUFFED to her, I'd strangle you!"  
  
"Ah! But if you weren't handcuffed to her, you wouldn't have any reason to be mad!" Zidane gloated over his impeccable skills of reasoning. Lifting an eyebrow, Freya looked up at Amarant.  
  
"Why not cooperate to pull off this 'strangling' idea? Just now, it seems an exceedingly good one."  
  
Amarant nodded.  
  
"Deal."  
  
At this, a worried expression crossed Zidane's face, and he took a few steps away from the angry pair. He needn't have concerned himself. Freya, rather anxious to put this plan into effect, bolted forward so abruptly that Amarant was taken quite by surprise, thus losing his balance and toppling to the ground. Being of a fairly considerable mass, the momentum of his tumbling to the ground was able to not only halt her progress forward, but drag her back and down, directly on top of him, at which point he ceased his grumbling and stared up at her in mild shock.  
  
"Guys!" Zidane shouted at the door, his face red with suppressed laughter. "Get out here, now!"  
  
A sound of pounding feet echoed on the hard-packed dirt, and the next moment, the door, which oddly enough still stood despite the wreck of the rest of the tavern, was flung open.  
  
"What is it, Zidane?" Dagger stopped short at the sight of her friends in a most undignified position. She began to giggle, and Steiner shot her a horrified look.  
  
"Your Highness, I hardly think this is a humorous situation!"  
  
"My thoughts exactly," Freya agreed, attempting to climb to her feet, with several failed attempts. She glared at Amarant. "You know, if we're going to stand up, you'll have to move eventually."  
  
"…I think you broke something landing on me."  
  
An ill-timed passer-by had a lengthy snicker at this.  
  
"Oh, shut up!" Freya huffed. "I am NOT that heavy, nor are you so fragile."  
  
"Hey, guys," Zidane broke in, "how about we try to get those things off of you now? Unless," he added with a sly grin, "you like being chained together..."  
  
And then Zidane was obliged to dodge out of the way very quickly as Amarant jumped to his feet and tried to wrap his hand around Zidane's throat with no particular attention to sparing the young man's health.  
  
"Zidane! Amarant! You can fight later! Can we please get rid of these handcuffs now?" Freya pleaded. Zidane nodded.  
  
"Yeah. So, what should we try first?"  
  
"I am certain that I shall be able to cut through that chain without a problem," Steiner declared. He tried. He wasn't.  
  
"Okaaaaaaay...Plan B," Zidane announced, attempting to strike the chain in half with his own weapon. It, too, failed.  
  
An hour and fifty-seven failed attempts to cut the chain of the handcuffs later, a light broke over Dagger's face, and she slapped her hand to her head in a gesture of disbelief at her own forgetfulness.  
  
"I just thought of something!"  
  
"A way to get the handcuffs off?" Amarant demanded. Dagger shook her head.  
  
"No...not exactly..."  
  
"Then I don't care."  
  
"Hey, hey, hey, let's hear her out," Zidane suggested. "Go ahead, Dagger. What's up?"  
  
Dagger walked over to Freya and Amarant, and grabbed the chain joining the two metal bands. Amarant gave a derisive snort of laughter.  
  
"What, you gonna try to break it yourself?"  
  
The young Alexandrian glared at him.  
  
"No! Now, keep quiet for a second while I check something."  
  
For a moment, her face was a study of concentration. Then, with a heavy sigh, she looked up.  
  
"Erm...I have discovered why we have been unable to break the chain to these handcuffs."  
  
She paused, waiting for a response.  
  
"Well?" Freya prompted. "What did you find?"  
  
"...The metal has had a protection charm placed on it. Although laughably bad at sleight-of-hand, it seems as though the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles was still a skilled wizard. The spell he has cast is strong enough to keep any of our weapons from being able to cut this chain. The man must have lost several pairs of handcuffs to situations like this, minus his brutal murder by a small, angry redhead, and wanted to prevent any more from being ruined."  
  
There was a heavy silence.  
  
"Okay...so, what you're saying, Dagger, is that we can't get these cuffs off, and so Freya and Amarant had better just learn to get along REAAAALLY well?"  
  
A pained whimper arose from both.  
  
"No...not exactly. I'm sure there must be a way to break the spell, and then breaking the chain will just be a matter of visiting a blacksmith. However -"  
  
The hopeful expression on Zidane's face melted away.  
  
"-It may take some doing to find a way to break the spell."  
  
A yawn from Vivi, who had hitherto been asleep by the side of the road, broke the silence. He gazed about him, disoriented, then curled back up again. Zidane chuckled.  
  
"I guess Vivi's not used to such late nights. Well, what do you guys think? We obviously aren't getting those handcuffs off tonight. So, let's go find an inn for the night, okay? Tomorrow we can start looking for a way to break that spell."  
  
With a reluctant sigh, Freya agreed. Amarant, however, scowled at the young man.  
  
"You may have forgotten, that was the inn."  
  
With his free arm, he gestured to the nearby pile of kindling. "We already paid to rent the rooms in there. There isn't another inn around for a good thirty miles."  
  
"...Oh. Right. Well, should we try to walk?"  
  
"I don't think so, Zidane," Dagger said. "We are not familiar with this area, and it's already dark. We might run into monsters! And we definitely don't want that right now."  
  
Zidane snickered.  
  
"Says you, Dagger. I want to see those two fight while chained together!"  
  
And, once again, Zidane had to leap out of the way to avoid being decimated, this time by a flying fork.  
  
"Hey," the young man mused, "I thought we gave that back to Quina...but anyway, what do you suggest we do now, Dagger?"  
  
The young woman seated herself by the side of the road.  
  
"I suggest waiting for a wagon to go past, and then requesting a ride."  
  
Zidane shrugged.  
  
"Good enough. Let's do it, guys."  
  
The rest of the party plunked down by Dagger, staring intently down the road, listening intently for the rumble of wheels, except for Amarant, who leaned against a fence, arms crossed...such as he could with someone else's arm chained to his, at any rate. Thus, I suppose he crossed one of his arms, and looked generally silly doing so.  
  
"Oh, will you just sit down already?" Freya exclaimed, rolling her eyes, exasperated.  
  
"Why don't you stand up?" He crossed his arm more emphatically.  
  
"Fine," she sighed, climbing to her feet, then climbing up to sit on the fence.  
  
A long while passed. Finally, Zidane yawned and stretched.  
  
"Ho, hum. This is pretty boring, isn't it, guys?"  
  
Various murmurs of agreement drifted from the group.  
  
"I know! Let's reminisce to pass the time!" Zidane beamed at his amazingly good idea. "I'll start. Do you remember the time we all went to that magic show by that really awful magician…oh, what was his name? It started with an 'M,' didn't it? Anyway, and while we were there, Amarant and Freya got handcuffed together..."  
  
He scratched his head, oblivious to the fact that Freya was struggling to get within a close enough range to end his life, trying unsuccessfully to drag Amarant along with her.  
  
"It all started when we got to that town. We needed a place to stay, and that tavern guy said he rented out rooms. As we went in, we noticed that there was something unusual in the air; something was going on that night..." 


	2. I Remember it Like it was Yesterday

Zidane's Flashback:  
  
"Oh...my goodness. Zidane, what is that thing?" Dagger's brow furrowed in confusion as she gazed at an odd rectangular box seated on the stage. It was about six feet tall – it could have easily held an average person, and there was the outline of a humanoid creature drawn on the front of it, with holes where the feet, hands and head would be.  
  
"That box? I don't know...I think it has something to do with that guy's supposed 'magic act,'" Zidane replied, gesturing toward a poster on the wall of the tavern. The poster showed a picture of a middle-aged man with long, stringy black hair, a black moustache and goatee, and a horrible, horrible rhinestone studded cape slung about his shoulders. Beneath the picture, big friendly black letters proclaimed, 'Don't miss the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles, the world's most mysterious magician! In town for one night only.'  
  
"I see. Does...does he lock people in there?" Dagger glanced at the poster of the man nervously.  
  
"He might," Zidane replied absently, scanning the small room for a free table large enough to seat their entire group. "Hah!" he shouted triumphantly as one at the side of the stage came into his view. "Let's go, guys."  
  
"Well, look at that," Steiner muttered, reading the poster intently. "That's tonight. We shall be treated to quite a show indeed."  
  
"What's that, Steiner?" Dagger turned to face the Knight of Pluto.  
  
"Ah, it's nothing, Your Highness."  
  
Dagger nodded and turned to follow Zidane. Steiner headed off after them, stepping aside to let Vivi pass.  
  
  
  
"Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to present to you, in town for an exclusive one-night engagement at out fine establishment, the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles, the greatest magician in Gaia!"  
  
"I'm sure," Freya murmured as the tavern owner stepped aside, pressed the play button on a nearby tape deck, and gestured with a sweeping motion of his arm to the man climbing the three steps from the floor to the stage, singing as he went,  
  
"Oh, now, never was there ever a cat so clever as Magical Mr...me..."  
  
"That's...the man from the poster, isn't it?" Zidane noted thoughtfully. "Wow...I guess when they said tonight, they really meant 'tonight.'"  
  
"Apparently," Steiner commented. Magical Mr. Mistoffeles strode confidently across the stage, stopping in the centre. He waved to the crowd, smiling a huge, hugely cheesy smile.  
  
"Hey there. How are all you fine folks doing this evening?"  
  
A few unenthusiastic murmurs greeted the "magician's" question.  
  
"Good, good! I am absolutely thrilled to be here. I can tell we're gonna have a lot of fun together, can't you?"  
  
More unenthusiastic murmurs.  
  
"Not all at once, now," Amarant muttered sarcastically.  
  
"I'd feel sorry for that guy," mused Zidane, "if it weren't for that cape."  
  
"You're right, Zidane," Freya agreed. "That cape absolves us of any obligation to feel sympathy for the man."  
  
"Shh! I'd like to watch this," Dagger informed her table-mates. "I've never seen a magic act before!"  
  
"Oh, come on, Dagger! You're more of a magician than this guy could ever hope to be!" Zidane protested.  
  
"I meant that I've never seen a real fake magic act before," Dagger amended. "I think it might be very entertaining."  
  
Zidane shrugged and turned his attention to the stage, where the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles was in the process of hammering a nail, procured from one of the pockets of the tuxedo accompanying his rhinestone-studded cape, up his nose.  
  
"Oh, yeah," the young man commented dryly. "That's quality entertainment, alright."  
  
"Oh, come now, Zidane," Freya admonished lightly. "Let's keep an open mind."  
  
Zidane shrugged. 'I guess there's nothing better to do right now...other than hammer a nail up my own nose.' He turned to face the front of the tavern, where the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles was now trying desperately to find an audience volunteer to yank the nail from his nose using the other end of the hammer.  
  
"Anyone, folks? Any adventurous spirits out there? Any doubters? This is your chance to see for yourself that I'm no fake!" the self-acclaimed magician called out. Finally, a hand shot up at the back of the tavern, and a short, dark-haired girl in white pants, tunic, and cape bounded up to the stage.  
  
"For the sake of justice," she proclaimed proudly to the tavern, "I shall expose this fraud for what he is!"  
  
"Hey, nice rack, sweetie!" an unidentified man called out from the crowd. More such comments, joined by cat-calls and whistles, followed. The girl's eyes filled with tears, which she angrily dashed away with the back of her hand. A decidedly angry growl, from a certain chimera that some of you may be familiar with, quickly brought the commentary on the young girl's chest to a close.  
  
"Let's just get to it, okay?" she said grumpily to the glowing mass of rhinestone, cheesy grin, and straggly facial hair.  
  
"Agreed," he replied, his voice rather nasal from the nail up his nose. He handed her the hammer. She flipped it over, caught the nail between the two prongs on the end, and began to pull gently, but steadily downward. The nail, covered in a coat of blood, slid out with a sickening squish sound, and landed in the girl's hand. Her response was immediate and drastic. She shrieked, hurled the nail out into the crowd, and darted from the stage, presumably to go wash her hands.  
  
"Uh, Dagger? You okay?" Zidane murmured to the young Alexandrian ruler, who now looked rather green.  
  
"Oh, just fine," she assured him with a shaky laugh. "It's rather fascinating, isn't it?"  
  
"I suppose you could call it that," he agreed warily. 'Geez,' he thought, 'I wonder what this hack is gonna do next.'  
  
"I do wonder what mystical feats the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles has for us next!" Steiner exclaimed in an unwitting paraphrase of Zidane's thoughts, leaning forward in his chair to better see the stage, and fairly glowing with excitement.  
  
"Someone really needs to get out more," Zidane muttered to Freya, gesturing toward Steiner.  
  
'Agreed," she replied.  
  
"And now it is time for 'The Cabinet of Mystery!'" Mr. Mistoffeles wheeled onto the stage the large box that had so worried Dagger earlier. "First, I'll need a young lady from the audience."  
  
Silence.  
  
"Anyone?"  
  
Silence.  
  
"Anyone at all?"  
  
The Magical Mr. Mistoffeles sighed, exasperated.  
  
"If someone doesn't volunteer, I'll just pick someone at random," he warned, scowling.  
  
"Hey, I'd do it," a voice called out from the crowd, laughing, "but I ain't a lady!"  
  
Mr. M. was on the man immediately.  
  
"Ah, but that doesn't matter at all, my dear fellow! It is just my experience that women tend to wear less loose clothing that could possibly get stuck in the..." He waved his arms in a gesture that was supposed to be mystical, but fell sadly short. "...Cabinet of Mystery."  
  
"Okay...so, should I come up?"  
  
"Most definitely, sir!"  
  
With a shrug, the young man started up to the stage. He was so completely average and ordinary that I'll not waste your time on a lengthy description of him. All you need to know is that this young man contained boundless energy, made very clear in the way he bounced up to the stage and stood, noticeably vibrating, awaiting his instructions.  
  
"Now, my good man, would you be so kind as to step into the...Cabinet of Mystery?"  
  
"If he does that stupid arm wavey thing one more time, I'm going to take the..." Zidane waved his arms dramatically. "...Cabinet of Mystery, and throw it into a river with him locked inside!"  
  
On stage, the jittery young man stepped inside the cabinet, which the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles shut with a muted 'click.' A continuous 'thunk' could be heard as the young man's head connected with the top of the cabinet as he bounced up and down.  
  
Out in the audience, Dagger gasped as the magician withdrew a large, flat blade from a hook on the side of the cabinet and shoved it into a slot in the front of the cabinet...or at least, began to. He stopped abruptly as the jittery young man locked inside gave a yelp.  
  
"Hey! That hurt!" he protested.  
  
"Uh..." the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles began helplessly, aghast at what had almost happened. "Let's skip this one."  
  
He unlocked the cabinet, and the bouncy young man bounced back down to his table.  
  
"Dammit!" the magician murmured. "I had that one down cold in rehearsal!"  
  
The he looked up and smiled brightly.  
  
"Oh, well," he chirped. "These things happen. Now, for my next astounding feat of prestidigitation, I'll need two more audience volunteers!" The Magical Mr. M. scrutinized the crowd with bated breath. "Any takers?"  
  
An evil smirk crossed Zidane's face. "They'll do it!" he called out, waving his arms to get the magician's attention, and then pointing to Amarant and Freya, who were simultaneously tuning out the rather atrocious act with a conversation of their own. "Pick them, cat-man!"  
  
"Ah! Excellent!" exclaimed the aforementioned 'cat-man.' "We have a pair of brave souls! Will you folks come on up to the stage, please?"  
  
"Uh...no," Amarant replied shortly.  
  
"Erm...what does he want? Why is he calling us to the stage? Is it even us he's calling?" Freya murmured. The red-haired man sighed.  
  
"He wants 'audience volunteers' for his next trick, and Zidane told him we'd do it."  
  
"Oh! Why did Zidane tell him that?"  
  
"Damned if I know."  
  
"Hmmm...he isn't going away." Freya glanced up at the magician, who hovered at the edge of the stage just above their table, still waiting with a terribly pleading expression for them to join him on stage. "I hate to say it, Amarant, but I don't think we've much of a choice. Perhaps we should just go up?"  
  
"Hmph! I don't hate to say it, but never in a million years."  
  
"But then the poor man will be without his volunteers! He won't get to perform his magic trick!"  
  
"Good."  
  
"Or he might recruit some other poor souls from the audience."  
  
"Better them than me."  
  
"What could go wrong?"  
  
"A man nearly had a saw shoved through his stomach. I'd rather not find out."  
  
Freya sighed. Time for a bribe.  
  
"If you go along with this, I promise not to speak a word to you for a week."  
  
A silence followed.  
  
"A whole week?"  
  
"A whole week."  
  
"Make it two."  
  
"...Okay, two weeks it is."  
  
"Fine. Let's get this over with."  
  
Amarant climbed to his feet and hauled himself up over the edge of the stage. Freya shook her head and walked around to the steps.  
  
"...Was that terribly necessary?" she inquired, brushing a clump of dust from his shoulder. "They do have those steps there for a reason."  
  
"My way's easier. And anyway, woman, you promised me two weeks,"  
  
Shrugging, she turned to the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles.  
  
"Where do you want us?"  
  
The Magical Mr. M. made a sweeping gesture toward two chairs, placed side by side in the center of the stage.  
  
"Have a seat, my dear friends."  
  
"We aren't your friends," Amarant pointed out. "We just met you. We probably still wouldn't be if we'd met you before..."  
  
"Erm...alright. If you would please sit down, my good gentleman…"  
  
"I'm also not your gentleman, good or bad," he informed the magician, plunking down in the chair on the left.  
  
"Or even a gentleman at all," Freya added, taking the other chair, ignoring the stony glare she was receiving from the bounty hunter.  
  
"Uh...very well," Mr. M. conceded, wishing desperately that he had chosen different volunteers. Perhaps that cute little dark-haired girl in white again...But, as he had chosen these two, he was determined to make the best of it. The Magical Mr. Mistoffeles prided himself on his resourcefulness.  
  
He reached into a pocket on the inside of his cape, and withdrew a pair of handcuffs. Holding them up for all to see, he wondered uneasily if the things would even fit around that man's wrist. Adjustable or no, he didn't see how they possibly could...  
  
"Uh...what are those?"  
  
With a heavy sigh, the magician turned to address the source of the question. Amarant eyed the man warily, his arms crossed.  
  
"These are handcuffs," Mr. Mistoffeles replied with a smile. "They are, in fact, the very basis of my next trick."  
  
"Ooh! Handcuffs! Kinky!" shouted the unidentified man from the crowd that had earlier reduced the young girl to tears by commenting on her chest. This time, no catcalls, whistles, or additional comments followed. Likely the 'I-will-kill-you-if-you-make-a-single-sound-so-help-me-gods' expression on Amarant's face had something to do with it. Chuckling, the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles strutted over to the two chairs, dangling the handcuffs before the noses of his unwilling 'volunteers.'  
  
"Now," he announced, "I have here a pair of ordinary handcuffs, not altered in any way. If you will, my dear, please give me your hand."  
  
Freya held her hand out, beating down the urge to shove the man headfirst into the cabinet 'o mystery and take off. She flinched at the click of the band of metal closing around her wrist.  
  
"And now you, sir," the performer addressed Amarant. Heaving a long sigh, he stuck out his wrist.  
  
"That isn't gonna fit me," he informed Mr. M. coldly. The next second, the click of a handcuff closing sounded. "Well, I'll be damned..."  
  
"As you can see, folks, our friends are quite undeniably joined at the wrist."  
  
He motioned for them to stand up and hold up their wrists for all to see.  
  
"Hey, I read a book about this! Those are trick handcuffs!" a high, feminine voice called out from the crowd. All eyes darted in its direction, to behold a small, very slim girl with masses of brilliant red hair tumbling about her shoulders, stand up on her chair.  
  
"They are not!" Mr. M. protested, his lower lip quivering slightly.  
  
"Are too!" the girl insisted.  
  
"Are not!"  
  
"Are too!"  
  
"Are not, you flat-chested little brat!" the ever-so-foolish Mr. Mistoffeles shrieked. The girl stiffened, and a dangerous expression came into her eye. Then an expression of eerie calm passed over her face as she began chanting.  
  
"Darkness beyond twilight, crimson beyond blood that flows – "  
  
The girl's three companions: the dark-haired girl in white, the chimera- man, and a tall blond swordsman garbed in blue, were on their feet in an instant, herding people out of the inn, shouting "Dragon-Slave alert!!!"  
  
"Hey...guys?" Zidane spoke up. "Do any of you get the feeling that we should get away from the table right now?"  
  
"Yes! Let us hurry!" Steiner agreed, leaping to his feet and tucking a very indignant Vivi under his arm as he did so. Rolling his eyes, Zidane followed Steiner and Vivi out into the crowd, behind the angry red-headed girl. Dagger sprinted after them.  
  
"Uh...what's going on?" Amarant felt the pit drop out of his stomach. Something really bad was going to happen; he could practically smell it. And it wouldn't be something dramatic, either. Likely, it would just be really stupid.  
  
"I...I think the girl is trying to cast some sort of spell on our friend the magician," Freya replied hesitantly.  
  
"It's not just a spell!" a voice proclaimed from behind them. They both turned to see the blond swordsman sprinting toward them. "It's the Dragon- Slave! We've gotta get you two off this stage! Quick! She's almost done!"  
  
"DRAGON SLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVE!!!" the girl shrieked just as the blond man dragged Amarant, who consequently dragged Freya, from the stage.  
  
And onstage, the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles – along with the key for the handcuffs – stood, frozen, watching helplessly as his moment of demise rapidly approached. One thought and one thought alone echoed across his mind:  
  
"Oh, shiiiiiiii-"  
  
A tremendous explosion rang out through the tavern...which promptly ceased to be a tavern. From the outside, it appeared as though a gigantic ray of energy had shot through the wall of the building, and then spread into an even more gigantic, all-encompassing fiery bubble of destruction.  
  
Amid the pile of scrap wood that was left of the tables surrounding the stage, the late magician's volunteers struggled to remove themselves from the doggie-pile that had formed.  
  
"...he had the key on him, didn't he?" Amarant growled.  
  
Freya nodded mutely, an expression of utter misery on her face.  
  
"And you asked what could possibly go wrong."  
  
She merely nodded again, her expression becoming more nauseous by the second.  
  
"Think there's any point searching the stage for the key?"  
  
She shook her head.  
  
"Yeah, I don't think so either."  
  
Silence.  
  
"Well? Aren't you gonna say anything?"  
  
She shook her head.  
  
"Oh, right. Our deal. Eh, what the hell? I don't wanna be chained to a mute, so talk away."  
  
She sighed, moving her arm experimentally, checking for permanent damage.  
  
"...I hate magic shows."  
  
"Yeah, so do I."  
  
"Could this day get any worse?"  
  
"It can if you keep saying that."  
  
"How did both of us manage to land on my arm?"  
  
"One of the mysteries of the universe, rat."  
  
"Before you call me that, remember that you have to spend an undefined amount of time with me at very close quarters."  
  
"Oh, what're you gonna do? Talk me to death?"  
  
"I can try."  
  
"...Can the deal be back on?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Dammit." 


	3. Mr Kaughnee and His Jaunty Green Hat of ...

Chapter 3 – Mr. Kaughnee and His Jaunty Green Hat  
  
  
  
A quick note: It has recently come to my attention that Steiner's first name is NOT, as I had always thought, Aldebert, and is, rather, Adelbert. I have corrected Chapter 3 to reflect this. Thank-you, and enjoy. :o)  
  
  
  
"I remember that time," Steiner declared as Zidane's flashback came to a close. "I remember it like it was yesterday…or maybe even more recently…"  
  
"You mean, like twenty minutes ago?" Dagger suggested, shaking with suppressed laughter.  
  
"Yes!" Steiner exclaimed. "Just like that!"  
  
"That's because IT WAS TWENTY MINUTES AGO!!!" Amarant howled. Off in the distance, a wolf howled back.  
  
"Oh, you shut up!" he shouted at the animal.  
  
"Now, now, sir, hasslin' the animals won't help ye none," an unfamiliar voice proclaimed, chuckling. Zidane glanced up, delighted to see a wagon roll to a stop in front of them. In the wagon sat an old man, clothed in the traditional garb of a peasant, a jaunty green hat resting comfortably on his head.  
  
"Hey, man, we're trying to get to the nearest inn. Do you think you could give us a ride there?" Zidane beseeched, his eyes wide and hopeful. The man's eyes twinkled merrily.  
  
"Now, that's just why I stopped. A rather curious thing; had this strange urge to take this road home instead of my usual one. Guess I found out why. Seems I'm something of a godsend to you folks. It's this hat. I declare, it's got magic powers." He motioned to the group to hop aboard the uncommonly spacious wagon, patting his jaunty green hat lovingly.  
  
"Weeeeell, climb on board, kids! Ain't got all night. Miriam, she gets angry if I'm home too late."  
  
Zidane shrugged and headed over to the wagon. 'Heck, don't look a gift- horse in the mouth,' he reflected, taking a quick peek at the horse's teeth. He lifted Dagger into the small vehicle, helped Vivi climb aboard, and then bounced up into the wagon himself. Steiner, with much clanking, followed suit. Shrugging, Freya hopped from the fence and into the wagon, as did Amarant, who had resumed his grumbling.  
  
The old man stared oddly at the last two as they settled in the hay to prepare for the ride.  
  
"There a story behind this?"  
  
"Don't ask," growled Amarant, crossing his arm again. The man held up his hands in a placating gesture.  
  
"Hey, fair enough. Everyone's entitled to their own guilty pleasures, and if chaining yourself to your little lady there is yours, that's no stranger than some I've heard about. Me myself, there's nothin' I enjoy more after a long day than coming home to my darling wife with a jar of apricot jelly and…"  
  
The old man was cut off abruptly as a fiercely blushing Freya hastened to tell him exactly what had happened.  
  
"Oh! Heh-heh…s'why I avoid magic shows like they was the plague. Nothin' good ever comes of people tryin' to make fools out of others…no matter how easy it may be at times." His eyes twinkled merrily.  
  
"You've got that right," Amarant muttered darkly, scowling at the remains of the tavern as though he could thus make the after-life just a little bit worse for the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles. The old man laughed, taking up the reigns and prompting the horse into motion. The sleek red mare twitched her tail indifferently, then set off at an easy pace through the darkened landscape of the village.  
  
"The name's Kaughnee, by the way. Jack Kaughnee. What does the world know all you fine folks as?"  
  
"I'm Zidane Tribal," Zidane answered cheerily. Dagger thought for a moment.  
  
"I'm Dagger..uh…Tribal." Her expression registered surprise and mild horror at what she had just said, as well as at the all-too-pleased expression on Zidane's face.  
  
"That's right," he confirmed, wrapping an arm around the young woman's shoulders and pulling her close. "We got married not long ago, actually."  
  
"Oh! Congratulations, both of ye! I wish ye all the years of happiness the world could possibly give ye! Careful not to be too happy, though." He affixed them both with a sober look. "The gods don't like it." Then he glanced back at Vivi.  
  
"And what do they call ye, little fellow?"  
  
"I-I-I'm Vivi," the 'little fellow' replied with a mighty yawn. Jack nodded.  
  
"Very nice to meet ye, Vivi. By the way, a very interesting hat you have there. A man's hat can be his best friend, can't it?"  
  
"Um...I suppose," the rather startled Vivi replied.  
  
"I'm tellin' ye! And what of you two? What do you go by?"  
  
He turned around and raised an eyebrow at Amarant and Freya, who were trying to give each other all the space possible while joined at the wrist. Amarant glanced up.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Your name," Jack prompted, an amused grin on his face.  
  
"Oh. It's Amarant."  
  
"Alright. And you, my dear?"  
  
"Why am I getting called that today? Oh, well. My name's Freya."  
  
"A pretty name. And how long've you two been together?"  
  
Freya sighed impatiently.  
  
"I already told you! We got handcuffed together at the magic show earlier."  
  
"Uhm...that wasn't exactly...ah, never mind. It's not important. And what's yer handle, sir?"  
  
He glanced over his shoulder at Steiner, suppressing a smile at the state of the man's armour. Steiner, who had been sitting with his head bent forward on his hand, watching the scenery creep past, straightened up immediately, a guilty expression crossing his faced at having been caught so unaware.  
  
"My name, my good man? I am Adelbert Steiner."  
  
"Adelbert, eh? A fine name. T'was my uncle's. A better man never lived. And a great collector of hats! There was not a hat in the world that that man did not own at some point or another. It was he who sparked my own interest in the wide world o' hats. This," he gestured proudly to his jaunty green hat, "was the hat he gave me on my fifteenth birthday. It was my first hat."  
  
The group glanced at one another in uneasy silence at the man's sentimental, rather teary sigh. Finally, Dagger spoke up hesitantly.  
  
"Oh…my. Well, you must have taken very good care of it to have it last so long."  
  
Jack's brows drew together.  
  
"You callin' me old, Missy?" he demanded.  
  
"No..." Dagger replied, shrinking back, eyes wide. Zidane pulled her closer and glared at Jack.  
  
"Leave her alone! She didn't mean that. And anyway, it's pretty obvious that you aren't so young."  
  
"Zidane!" Steiner admonished, nervously glancing at the man to gauge his reaction. He hoped Mr. Kaughnee wouldn't take it terribly badly. He, for one, did not want to walk the rest of the way to the inn. To his great relief, Mr. Kaughnee laughed and when he turned around, there was humour and warmth in his eyes, visible even in the dark.  
  
"Eh, leave the boy be. He's young yet. He'll learn to hold his tongue one of these days."  
  
"We aren't holding our breath," Freya murmured.  
  
"`Sides, I like a lad with spirit," Jack continued. He winked at Dagger. "I assume you do, as well..."  
  
"Lad!" Zidane muttered rebelliously.  
  
"Are we almost to the inn yet?" Amarant demanded. "I can't feel my leg anymore."  
  
"Almost," Jack replied, chuckling again. "Just another twenty, thirty minutes."  
  
A collective groan rose from the group.  
  
Twenty or thirty minutes later.…….….  
  
"Good-bye, Mr. Kaughnee!" Steiner called after the retreating wagon, waving his arm frantically. "Thank-you! And good luck with all your hat- collecting endeavours in the future!"  
  
"And that apricot jelly thing!" Zidane added, cupping his hands over his mouth.  
  
"What a nut," Amarant muttered under his breath, striding toward the dirt path leading up to a small brown building.  
  
"Whooah! Would you stop doing that?!" Freya admonished the large man as she struggled to regain her balance, nearly tumbling into a well. He considered this for a moment. Then-  
  
"No."  
  
"A-a-are we going in now?" Vivi asked pleadingly, stifling another yawn.  
  
"Yes. Don't worry, Vivi, we'll get you to bed sometime tonight," Dagger told the small boy comfortingly, then added to herself, "I hope."  
  
Together, they followed Zidane into the small, rather dilapidated inn. 


	4. My Name is Generic Young Man 2, and I Ha...

Chapter 4 – My Name is Generic Young Man #2, and I Have a Problem...  
  
Author's Notes: Wow...I honestly never saw myself going back to this again after how Chapter 3 turned out, and now...it's totally snowballed out of my control. Got Chapter 4 here, almost done Chapter 5, and even a plot mapped out for the rest! I have a plot figured out in advance?! Something's wrong. Mus' be the Kupo Nuts.  
  
Anyway, I would like to express my fervent and endless thanks to those of you out there who have seen fit to read and review this so far. And now, enough with the notes, and…………………………………(you can smell it coming!)……………………...  
  
  
  
Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon with the chapter!!!!  
  
  
  
It was, the young man behind the desk reflected sadly, sipping at the cool, bitter liquid in his large coffee mug, far, far, far too late for any sane person to still be awake. A rather odd thing, as the sun had set not three hours ago. Sane people seemed to be going to bed much earlier as of late. Could there possibly be a reason for it? Was some sinister force stirring, slowly turning the inhabitants of Gaia into inside-out vampires? Would the insane fraction of the population soon be the only ones left in control of their minds? The young innkeeper shook his head, shifting in his hard wooden chair in attempt to rid his posterior of the pins and needles that had overtaken it. Or perhaps the entire thing was entirely in his head, a delusion brought about by too much cold coffee, coupled with the boundless monotony of this job? Probably the last one, he decided. By the gods, how had he come to be here? How the hell? He had always been brilliant in his studies as a young lad; he had been ambitious, hard-working, likeable – what had gone wrong? How on earth had his lofty dreams of becoming the world's greatest engineer been shoved aside in favour of sitting all night behind the desk of the world's least-visited inn? Sighing morosely, he let the wave of memories engulf him, take him back to that last year of his schooling, two years ago, when he had discovered the one object that had seemed at the time to make his life complete...the object that, later on, would prove to be his greatest curse: the Kupo Nut.  
  
He had known from the first moment that he had caught a whiff of that bewitching aroma, that his destiny must ever after be closely entwined with those of the Moogles. After all, where there were Moogles, there were Kupo Nuts. It was this reasoning, descending upon him in the proverbial burst of light one might, one endless night when he lay awake, tossing and turning and longing with all of his being for Kupo Nuts, that had led him to what had been considered by his friends and family a most shameful act. He had purchased a Moogle Suit from a Lindblum theatre company, had abandoned his studies, and had lived for the next ten months with a group of Moogles. The furry little fools had never known the difference; likely didn't to this very day. He had collected every Kupo Nut he could find, hoarding them all against the blessed day when he finally had enough to last him his life, and he could take his leave of the loathsome little creatures, who lived, he firmly believed, only to divest him of his Kupo Nuts.  
  
One day, while in a tavern with one of the few cronies that he had not alienated with his odd obsession, this friend of his had posed for him the question of why he didn't simply buy the Kupo Nuts that his soul craved in a store. Not long after, this acquaintance had gone mysteriously missing, never to be found. Evidently, no one had ever warned him of the danger in questioning a maniac.  
  
After a time, the mother of the young engineer-turned-moogle, a loving and sensitive soul, hurt to the quick by her son's abandonment of his family, not entirely understanding what he saw in the food of the Moogles, but unwilling to give up on him, had hunted him down. Although he was kept busy with his letter delivery duties (all the more busy, being that he lacked the amazing speed of the Moogles), he had, of late, felt pangs of longing for his old life; for his friends, his family, his home, and as such, he had been delighted to see her.  
  
Although somewhat nonplussed at first by his fierce accusations that she had come for the Kupo Nuts, the young man's mother quickly put her fear aside and stated the real reason for her visit.  
  
"My son," she had whispered brokenly, taking his hand, "your father and I are worried about you. If you are willing, we want you to come home, get the help you need, and eventually, rejoin society."  
  
She had felt it quite unnecessary to mention that her husband's concern was less for his son and more for the money that his son had stolen to purchase the expensive, carefully made Moogle Suit.  
  
The young man, seeing the anguish in his mother's eyes, could no longer stand it. He had left a note stating simply that he would no longer be a part of the letter delivery system, and had left with his mother the very next morning.  
  
Upon arriving home, he had been coldly informed by his father that he would be expected to take a job to pay back every single gil that he had stolen to buy the Moogle Suit. The following months had seen him find this job in this very isolated inn, and seek help to overcome his Kupo Nut addiction.  
  
Yes, nine months later, this young man was continuing to advance, slowly, but steadily, down the path to healing. Certainly, there were still nights when the longing for the tasty treat of the Moogles seemed unbearable, when he felt that he would have surely sold his soul for merely a whiff of one; there always would be. But he no felt the urge to maul every Moogle he came across, pick them up by the small red pom-poms atop their heads and shake them until they handed over the blessed Kupo Nuts.  
  
He shook his head; he certainly had been very fortunate. Not all addicts to the Kupo Nut escaped so unscathed as he had. All in all, he was a very lucky young man. He still had his health, his mental faculties, he had found a reasonably well-paying, if mind-numbingly boring job, and he was earning back the love and trust of his family and friends. Still, at times like this, two hours into the most hellish shift possible, late at night, when the meagre possibility of a traveler dropping in shrunk to a total impossibility, it was very difficult to count one's blessings. Slowly, his eyes slid shut and he fell forward, his forehead connecting with the smooth mahogany of the desk with a hollow 'thud.'  
  
"Hey," Zidane greeted the young man behind the desk cheerfully. He frowned at the distinct lack of response from the prone form slumped over the large chunk of wood. He tried again, more insistently. "Hey!"  
  
"Zidane!" Dagger admonished severely. "The man is asleep! Shouting at him and waking up the rest of the guests here is a horribly rude thing to do!"  
  
"Yeah," Zidane agreed, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly, "I guess you're right."  
  
With that, he leaned down and snatched the Mace of Zeus from a rather bewildered Vivi, flipped it over, and poked the young man several times. Awake on the first poke, it took the poor innkeeper some time to struggle to a sitting position, given the staff poking him repeatedly in the head and all. He flailed desperately, unsure of what exactly was going on. By the gods, had he been right about the evil threat? Had he been kidnapped by the fiend? Was he now to be turned into an inside-put vampire, just like so many other poor souls?  
  
"Oh, good," Zidane commented as the man behind the desk began to respond to the repeated pokes, "you're awake. We need four rooms for tonight."  
  
Yawning, the young man pointed to a set of narrow, bare painted wooden steps behind him.  
  
"Right up there, folks," he informed them, the shock of actually having a customer not yet penetrating the fatigued fog surrounding his brain, before slumping forward over the desk once more. Seconds later, a soft snore echoed through the cozy, though somewhat shabbily decorated room. Zidane sighed, snatching Vivi's staff up again and rapping the young man gently on the head with it. Said young man bolted upright, glaring at the thief.  
  
"Do you mind? I told you, the rooms are upstair!"  
  
"Actually, I do kinda mind. You never gave us keys to get into the rooms."  
  
"Oh...right." Grinning sheepishly, the young man slid three keys across the desk toward Zidane. "Two beds per room, one-hundred gil per room per night. Enjoy your stay."  
  
Waving his thanks, Zidane turned and approached the rest of the group. He held the first large brass key, a number 4 etched into it, out to Steiner.  
  
"Okay, Rusty, you and Vivi can share Room 4." He smiled sympathetically at the small mage. "Sorry 'bout that, Vivi. But don't worry; if he starts to snore too loud, you know what to do, right?"  
  
Vivi tilted his head to the side, gazing up at Zidane in confusion.  
  
"You hit him with a pillow until he stops," the young thief clarified. Vivi shook his head.  
  
"B-b-but Steiner doesn't snore. It's you who snores, Zidane."  
  
"That's a dirty, rotten lie, and you know it!"  
  
"Actually, Zidane, Vivi is quite right. You do snore," Dagger interjected. "Just ask anyone."  
  
"You certainly do," Freya agreed.  
  
"Like a cement mixer...whatever the hell that is," Amarant added.  
  
"They speak the truth," Steiner conceded, nodding. Zidane pouted.  
  
"I don't snore! You're just all against me."  
  
"Of course, Zidane," Dagger giggled. "None of us have anything better to do that meet daily and plot against you."  
  
"I knew it!" the young man shouted triumphantly. "It was all just a matter of getting you to admit it!"  
  
"Enough of this ridiculous banter!" Steiner chastised the young couple severely. "It is late, and we would all like to go to sleep. Hand out the rest of the keys, Zidane, and let us see about sleeping some time tonight."  
  
"Oh, fine. You have no sense of fun. You know that, don't you?" Zidane took another key from his pocket and handed it to Amarant. "Alright. I guess, by necessity, you two are sleeping togeth – uh, sharing a room. Just...uh...try not to kill each other before morning, alright?"  
  
"Oh, don't worry, Zidane. If I feel the indescribable urge to kill something, you'll do nicely," Freya informed him. Amarant crossed his arm, looking no less silly than the last time he had done so.  
  
"You'll have to race me to it," he growled, not put in any better a humour by the knowledge that he was, indeed, an immensely silly sight to behold.  
  
"Hey, come on guys!" Zidane protested. "Once again, this is NOT all my fault!"  
  
"Right. It's only about three quarters your fault," Freya agreed.  
  
"Exactly! And you can't hold it against me forever!"  
  
"Not forever. Only until these damn cuffs come off," Amarant replied with a snort.  
  
"Alright, look, you guys. It's obvious that this isn't an ideal situation for either of you. It isn't really my idea of a great situation, either. But come on! Try to make the best of it! See this as the opportunity to strengthen your friendship. Get to know each other!"  
  
"I'd sooner gouge out my own eye with a spoon," Amarant shot back. Freya gave a soft chuckle.  
  
"Well, thank-you!"  
  
Amarant scowled at her.  
  
"I could gouge out your eye, if you'd prefer," he offered coldly.  
  
"Quite alright, but thank-you just the same."  
  
Zidane grinned.  
  
"Good job, Freya! That's the spirit!" Then he turned to Dagger with a mischievous. "So, Mrs. Tribal, I guess it's just you and me."  
  
"Um...alright, I suppose..." Dagger conceded hesitantly. She turned and began to climb, her feet echoing hollowly on the narrow wooden stairs, their middle covered by a grey threadbare carpet with blue tulips spattered liberally over it. Zidane sauntered after her, grinning hugely.  
  
"After you, Master Vivi," Steiner offered, stepping aside with a sweeping motion of his arm. Vivi ambled up the stairs, and Steiner followed, clanking merrily all the way. At the top of the stairs, he bid the rest of the group goodnight, and clanked into Room 4, wincing slightly as Vivi's foot caught on the little bit of raised wood on the floor of the doorway, sending him plummeting to the ground with a 'thump.'  
  
Zidane, still grinning a most cheesy grin at Dagger, slid his key into the lock on Room 5 and opened the door, stepping back to let her through first, and taking the advantage to enjoy a nice, long look at her shapely posterior. Luckily for him, Dagger was, by now, too tired to notice. Had she been more widely awake, Bahamut may have found himself summoned from Cool Hat Land, where he resided along with all the other Eidolons (see 'Of Godly Bunnies and Godly Hats' by Bezo and Yezo – pleeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaase read it! We know it's at least mildly amusing! And Amarant has a very large role, if there's anyone out there – anyone at all – who might like that sort of thing), to kick Zidane's own shapely posterior into a few years down the road.  
  
With a resigned air, Amarant withdrew a key from his own pocket and unlocked the door of Room 3. Freya, with an equally resigned air, opened the door and followed him in. She had realized, somewhere around the middle of the wagon ride, that there was really no conceivable way to operate independently when chained to another person at the wrist, and to even try would be a futile endeavour.  
  
And so, as the three door slammed shut simultaneously, thus began a night of horror, madness, violence, and many, many contrived little plot devices. Read on!  
  
  
  
Ending Notes: Hmm...I'm doing a lot of these lately, but this has just been kind of a filler chapter until I could get on into all those contrivances and plot devices...and maybe even a few interesting events. Chapter 5, which shall contain all of these things (and a monkey – monkeys are cool. There should be more stories about monkeys). But, yeah. It all started when I was wondering if any people from the FF9 universe ate Kupo Nuts. Then I started to wonder why they wouldn't. Then I figured that perhaps, to people, they're horribly addictive. And from there, the whole thing was a runaway train hurtling down the track into utter ridiculousness.  
  
I like trains. *Grin* 


	5. One Night, Three Rooms

Chapter 5 – One Night, Three Rooms  
  
  
  
"Goodnight, Zidane," Dagger bid the young man wearily, pulling back the patchwork Crazy Quilt on one of the two small beds and climbing in. Zidane, seated on the other bed barely two feet away, ceased the task of removing his boots and pouted.  
  
"You're going to sleep already?"  
  
"Well, what else would I do?"  
  
"Oh," he drawled with a waggle of his eyebrows, "I can think of a few things. After all, we're man and wife now."  
  
"I set myself up for that," Dagger noted with a sigh. "Why do I always set myself up for these things? When will I learn?"  
  
"Maybe you keep setting yourself up for it because you like it," Zidane suggested mildly, searching through his travelling pack. The dark-haired young woman glared at him.  
  
"I don't think that's it," she informed him dryly. Zidane shrugged.  
  
"Well, okay. But, if you can't sleep..." His eyebrows began to waggle again. "...Let me know."  
  
"Good-night, Zidane," Dagger repeated firmly, flopping back onto the mattress and rolling over, thus signifying the end of the conversation.  
  
  
  
"Goodnight, Master Vivi," Steiner called to the small boy. An unintelligible murmur was the only response. He smiled fondly at the quilt- covered lump in the centre of the bed nearest the window.  
  
"Poor little fella," he mused aloud, "he's all tuckered out."  
  
Then he paused, his brow wrinkling. "All...tuckered...out?" he repeated incredulously. "Well, at least Freya can be glad to know that Rhianwen isn't picking solely on her anymore. Now she's abandoning all pretence of characterization with me, too!"  
  
Putting a hand to his chin as he considered the point that perhaps all characterization with all the characters had been sent to Another Dimension (tm) long ago, Steiner pulled back the colourful quilt spread over his own bed...one-handed, of course, as the other hand was on his chin. Then, giving up and using both hands, he climbed into the bed and pulled the covers up around himself.  
  
A few minutes later, all was silent in the room of the mage and the Knight of Pluto.  
  
  
  
"Good God!" Freya shook her head in despair at the sight of two small beds, about five feet apart. "How in the world are we going to figure this out?"  
  
Amarant shrugged.  
  
"We could just shove 'em together."  
  
"But...won't the innkeeper be angry if we start rearranging furniture?"  
  
"I don't think this place gets enough customers that he can afford to bitch about it, but it's his own damn problem if he does."  
  
"You're just in love with all the world, aren't you?"  
  
"Oh, shut up. Look, we can either move those beds together, or we can both try to fit onto one. I'm sure we've given enough people the wrong idea with these damn handcuffs that it doesn't matter if one bed's unused."  
  
He smirked as, predictably, she strode over to one of the beds without a moment's hesitation.  
  
"Just shut up and help me move this," she commanded coldly, the tone contrasting with her furious blush. Together they shoved the small bed over the wooden floor with a heavy scraping sound.  
  
"And I'm sure the innkeeper will have no problem at all with the scratches across the floor, either," Freya commented sarcastically.  
  
"This place isn't exactly high-end. With the shape this floor's in, I think a few scrapes might actually improve the look of it. And of course, you already shot down our alternative plan to moving the beds."  
  
She cast him an evil glare, stalking around to the other bed and dragging Amarant with her. Again, heavy dragging sounds filled the room. Suddenly, they stopped.  
  
"Hey, what the hell...? Why can't we move it any further?"  
  
"Oh, terrific. There's a table in between them."  
  
Amarant sighed.  
  
"Okay, let's get the damn table out of here."  
  
They tried. They failed miserably.  
  
"Alright, NOW what the hell's wrong?"  
  
"Oh, I don't believe it!"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Look carefully, Amarant. The table's bolted down."  
  
"Why the hell would they do something so fucking STUPID?"  
  
"Maybe they have a lot of people try to make off with their furniture."  
  
"Or maybe I should throw you out the window."  
  
"If I go out that window, I'm taking you with me."  
  
In spite of his current bad humour at the situation, he chuckled at this.  
  
"I guess that's true."  
  
"Not only that, but I doubt that kind of drop would hurt either of us."  
  
"Okay, I get it."  
  
"So, it would really be quite pointless. All it would do is leave us outside in the dead of night."  
  
"Yeah, I get-"  
  
"And then, since the key is inside the room, we would have to trouble that poor young man at the desk for another one."  
  
"Okay, enough-"  
  
"So, all around, utterly useless."  
  
"Yeah. Just like that entire conversation."  
  
She looked away with a 'hmph!'  
  
"So, what do we do about this situation with the table?"  
  
Amarant shrugged.  
  
"Beats me. Just sleep on them like that?"  
  
Raising an eyebrow, Freya gazed thoughtfully at the gap between the two beds.  
  
"That could work. Might be a little awkward, but it's better than trying to rip up a bolted-down table."  
  
"Or trying to share one of those things."  
  
"Or that," she replied through gritted teeth, settling onto the bed on the left side of the table. "Well! Now that we have that settled, good- night."  
  
"Yeah. G'night," Amarant replied, following suit...but with the other bed.  
  
  
  
An hour or so later, in Room 5...  
  
"Zidane!"  
  
The Genome murmured a sleepy reply, cuddling his pillow more tightly and rolling over. The voice hissed his name again.  
  
"Zidane!"  
  
His only reply this time was a soft snore.  
  
"Zidane!"  
  
Less a hiss than an irritated bark, this one penetrated the sleepy fog surrounding his brain, and he bolted upright in his bed, his gaze darting about disorientedly. Dagger smirked, satisfied.  
  
"Now that I have your attention, I thought you might like to know, I can't sleep."  
  
Zidane lifted an eyebrow, confused.  
  
"Gee..." he began uncertainly, "that's too bad, Dagger. Maybe some tea would help? We can see if Freya's still awake – she probably has some."  
  
Dagger sighed, but did not give up. Infusing as much significance into her tone as possible, she repeated,  
  
"Zidane. I can't sleep."  
  
Zidane simply shook his head apologetically.  
  
"Uh...I'm sorry. I don't really know how to help."  
  
The young woman dropped her head to her hand in despair. Lifting her head, she smiled seductively at the young man.  
  
"Didn't you say earlier, Mr. Tribal, that you had an idea, and I should let you know if I had trouble sleeping?"  
  
A light broke over Zidane's face, nearly piercing through the darkness of the room.  
  
"Oooooohhhhh..."  
  
  
  
A Few Minutes Later, in Room 4...  
  
Vivi sat bolt upright in bed. He put a hand to his head, dizzy. What had woken him up? A nightmare?  
  
'It couldn't have been that...I don't think I have dreams.'  
  
Ah! What was that sound? Making a concentrated effort to slow his breathing, Vivi listened very carefully. There it was again! Two voices, one male and one female, giggling madly amid gasps for air. Coming from the right, which meant it was Dagger and Zidane. And now Zidane was speaking. What was he saying? The idea not even occurring to him that it was rather a impolite thing to be listening in so intently, the small mage craned his neck, barely breathing at all now in his effort to hear. Ears pricking up, Vivi frowned as the words became discernable.  
  
"Left foot yellow?" he repeated, confused. "What could that mean?"  
  
  
  
One room over...making it Room 3...  
  
"Amarant! Did you just hear that?"  
  
Amarant sighed.  
  
"Did I just hear what?"  
  
"A loud thump!"  
  
"No."  
  
"Oh, come on! You'd have to be deaf not to have heard it!"  
  
"Yeah. Deaf...or asleep."  
  
"Oh! Were you asleep?"  
  
"Uh...yeah."  
  
"Sorry."  
  
Another sigh.  
  
"Forget it," he grumbled.  
  
"Alright. So...what do you think it was?"  
  
"Who cares?"  
  
"Depending on what it was, there might be a very good reason to care."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"Well...what if it was a cult of inside-out vampires, trying to turn our friends into their own fiendish kind?"  
  
"Go to sleep," Amarant ordered. "You obviously need it."  
  
"So…you don't think it was inside-out vampires?"  
  
"No."  
  
"What about normal vampires? Right-side-out vampires, so to speak?"  
  
"Uh..."  
  
  
  
Notes 1: That was...pretty short. Sorry. [Shrugs apologetically] Hey, short and sweet.  
  
The next one will be longer. Much, much longer. And probably very, very bitter.  
  
  
  
Notes 2: Well...that didn't work out quite as I had planned. It was going to be a lot sillier and more contrived. Sigh. Oh, well. There's always next chapter. [Evil grin]  
  
And silly and contrived it will be. Muahahahaha!!!  
  
Bye! [Huggles all the lovely, lovely readers out there who have decided to give this story a chance] 


	6. Contrivance and Horror and Madness! Oh, ...

Chapter 6 - Contrivance and Horror and Madness! Oh, My!  
  
  
  
Two hours later...  
  
The full, clear moon shone down upon the stillness of the rural country landscape, its fields of rolling green shimmering softly. The orb floated gently in the sky, illuminating everything with its glow, seeking out the hidden crevices of the land and bathing them, turning the ordinary mystical and beautiful with its touch. Shining down upon all as it did, it is not surprising that the cold, pale light of this majestic spectacle streamed through the window of a very nondescript inn, approximately thirty miles outside of a very nondescript town.  
  
  
  
In Room 5...  
  
At this point, the scene changes from outside to take us inside a room where all is still and silent, save for the occasional snore from the fair- haired young man who lay sprawled over the ground atop a plastic mat decorated liberally with dots of varying colours, arranged neatly into rows. These snores, however, do nothing to disturb the lovely young woman who is nestled cosily against his shoulder, her dark hair spilling over his chest like a shadow. Both are smiling in their sleep, as though enjoying some very pleasant dream. This is most likely the case. Let us move to a different room and not disturb the dreams of these two young lovers. And be careful not to trip over the spinner on your way out.  
  
  
  
In Room 4...  
  
This room is, also, bathed in moonlight. It is, however, a little tidier, not being scattered with plastic mats and spinners as Room 5 seems to be. Not only that, but its inhabitants have opted for the more sensible option of falling asleep in the two small beds provided by the inn. This is made obvious by the small lump, topped off by a gigantic pointy yellow hat, decorating one bed, and by the larger, more vocal lump, decorating the other.  
  
"Mein Lieblingskissen, sind Sie so weich," the lump murmurs, cuddling its pillow lovingly.  
  
All in all, another happy and peaceful scene. Let us not disturb this one, either.  
  
  
  
In Room 3...  
  
Although this room, too, is awash in the ethereal glow of moonlight, all is not so peaceful in the minds of both its inhabitants. To be sure, one, at least, has managed to find slumber. The young Burmecian woman, her breathing deep and regular, is quite obviously asleep.  
  
The other inhabitant of the room, however, is not. His free arm pillowing his head, replacing the pillow that has fallen to the floor and that he is quite unable to get without dislodging the other occupant of the room from her peaceful (and more importantly, in his opinion, quiet) state, he scowls darkly into the already dark night in a manner which suggests that he is not terribly happy right now.  
  
Let us make a hasty, silent exit before he notices us, and his unhappiness is directed this way.  
  
[The narrator adjusts her 'Tour Guide' hat and leads her group of tourists, their cameras flashing insistently, from the room.]  
  
  
  
Amarant stared up at the ceiling of the darkened inn room. 'How the hell did we get stuck in this bloody stupid situation? Eh, what the hell does it matter? We're here, it's dumb, and it doesn't look like it's ending any time soon. I'll just have to get used to sleeping with my left arm stretched out off the side of a bed.'  
  
He shifted, attempting to ease the ache in his left shoulder that came with remaining in a rather unnatural position for so long.  
  
'And why the hell do we have to sleep like this, anyway? Like it would've killed the stupid little chit to just share one bed. Alright,' he admitted silently, 'maybe one of these would've been a little crowded, but we could've at least moved that damn table and shoved them closer together. Who cares if it's bolted down? I could've ripped those bolts up along with the thing. Or, hell, even slept on the floor. We could have roomed with some of the others, saved a hundred gil. So, why the hell did we have to - why the hell am I talking to myself?'  
  
A pause.  
  
'And waiting for an answer?'  
  
At this unfortunate moment, Amarant felt a gentle tug on his wrist, which was somewhat akin to the waving of the proverbial red flag before the eyes of a bull.  
  
'Oh, like hell! Damned little rat's probably awake; just trying to see how much she can piss me off before morning. Well, let's see how she likes it.'  
  
With that, he decisively jerked his arm to the right, his shoulder shouting a loud 'Hallelujah!' as it left its odd position. As it so happened, Amarant had rather overestimated the maliciousness of the aforementioned 'damned little rat.' Freya, who had, by some miracle, managed to fall soundly asleep, was simply rolling over. She promptly ceased to be soundly asleep somewhere on her journey from the surface of the small bed to the small gap of ground between it and the other small bed. As she fell, she gave a startled yelp...and another as Amarant, who was not prepared for so forceful a retaliation so soon, and had thus relaxed, was dragged from his own bed and into the small gap, where he landed atop her in the ultimate show of contrived-ness.  
  
  
  
At this point, we cut away from the scene and into a rather different scene: that of a strangely decorated basement sitting-room/hideout. On a large blue cushion is seated a nineteen-year old girl in dark-dyed jeans and a black 'hoody,' with a wicked glint in her eye, madly typing on a laptop and cackling evilly to herself, pausing every now and again to take a long slurp from a large Slurpee cup placed conveniently nearby. It is immediately obvious that this girl can be one of only two things: an escaped denizen of a nuthouse, or a fan-fic author. We may conclude that she is the second. After all, no escaped nuthouse denizen would be so cruel (or kind, depending on how you look at it) to a poor rat-lady and a poor pair of very large arms. On the contrary, I have found that most nuthouse denizens are quite indifferent to both arms and rats.  
  
  
  
Now we cut back to a scene in the same inn, but in a different room. At the sound of a dismayed shriek, Adelbert Steiner sat bolt upright in his bed.  
  
"Your Majesty?!" he called, leaping to his feet. "Is that scoundrel attempting to take advantage of you?"  
  
"Whazzat, Rusty?" a groggy, sleep-slurred voice, most obviously Zidane's, called back.  
  
"Where is the Queen, you scoundrel?!"  
  
"She's asleep, man. Just like I was until you started hollering. Now, be quiet and go back to sleep!"  
  
This put the discussion to a fairly decided close. Exasperated, Steiner shook his head.  
  
"Well, if it wasn't Queen Garnet," he pondered slowly, "the who screamed?"  
  
"Um...Steiner?"  
  
Steiner glanced in the direction of the small voice.  
  
"Yes, Master Vivi?"  
  
"D-do you think Amarant and Freya have killed each other yet?"  
  
Steiner gasped.  
  
"By the gods! Perhaps that explains the scream! Come, Master Vivi! We must get over to Room 3 now! But first," he added, "I must put my armour back on. As much as I hate to admit it, Zidane was right. It is much more comfortable to sleep without it."  
  
Vivi heaved a long sigh as Steiner proceeded to hunt for the many different bits of armour scattered about the room. They could be here a while...  
  
Now the scene is that of the same inn room as previously, where poor Amarant has made an alarming discovery.  
  
"Dude! Where's my chocobo?"  
  
"Not that discovery! The other discovery!" Rhianwen's voice shouted from the ceiling, exasperated. Shrugging as best he could in the current situation, Amarant tried again.  
  
"Dammit! I'm stuck."  
  
"Erm...what do you mean?" Freya murmured faintly.  
  
"How many things can I mean by 'dammit I'm stuck?'" Amarant demanded sarcastically, scowling down at her. "I mean that I can't get up."  
  
"You've got to be kidding!"  
  
"No, I'm serious. I can't move. I'm stuck between these beds!"  
  
"Oh, bloody hell! Well, try again!"  
  
He did so, aided somewhat by her none too gentle attempts to shove him away, but to no avail.  
  
"Shit," he muttered. "I guess we'll just have to stay here and call for help until someone hears us."  
  
"How embarrassing..." she groaned in despair.  
  
  
  
Meanwhile, in Room 4...  
  
"Steiner, I really think we should just go. Y-you can find your armour later, can't you?"  
  
"Vivi!" Steiner halted dead in the process of hunting for his left shoe and stared at the little behatted fellow in horror. "Certainly not! I simply do not feel whole without it! Now," he pondered, scratching his head, "what did I do with my socks?"  
  
Vivi shook his head and sighed.  
  
  
  
Half an hour later, in Room 3...  
  
"...Weren't we gonna start screaming for help, or something?"  
  
"Oh...right."  
  
"You start," Amarant suggested. Freya glared darkly at him.  
  
"No, you start. This whole thing is your fault."  
  
"How?!"  
  
"Well, you were the one who dragged me onto the floor."  
  
"Yeah? Well, you dragged me down after you. If you hadn't done that, you coulda gotten up."  
  
"If you hadn't pulled me down, I wouldn't have pulled you down!"  
  
"If YOU hadn't started that little game of tug-of-war, I wouldn't have even moved!"  
  
"Little game of tug-of-war?!" she repeated incredulously, shifting slightly to try to take some weight off of her tail, which was currently whimpering for mercy...not literally, of course. That would just be silly! Uh...anyway... "I was asleep, you idiot!"  
  
"Well, how the hell was I supposed to know that?!"  
  
"Oh, forget it! Arguing won't help now."  
  
"What the hell else are we supposed to do until someone finds us?"  
  
"I don't know, but what will arguing solve?"  
  
"I'm hoping that if I piss you off enough, you'll stop speaking to me."  
  
"Hmph! More likely, I'll talk even more."  
  
"I hate you."  
  
"I know, pooky."  
  
"Pooky?!" he exclaimed with a slight blush. "Where the hell did that come from? What the hell is wrong with you?"  
  
Freya sighed.  
  
"Amarant, Dagger and Zidane just finished a rousing round of Twister. Steiner is hunting for his sock, singing German folk songs-"  
  
"Ah, so that's what that is," Amarant commented, scowling in the direction from which the final strains of 'Gehen Sie zu mir, meine liebe Socke zurück', bellowed out in a rather ghastly fashion, drifted.  
  
"-We got a ride to this inn from a man who is completely obsessed with hats, and likes to lick apricot jelly off of his wife. Before that, we saw a man destroyed by a girl no bigger than your arm. Before he was destroyed, he handcuffed us together. Why? Because he was performing a magic show!!!"  
  
Finished with this tirade, she shook her head. "And yet, the term 'pooky' is the only thing you comment on? I think the proper question, my friend, is 'what the hell is wrong with YOU?'"  
  
"Well, thank-you, Little Miss 'Let's Sum Up the Plot In Eighty Words of Less,'" Amarant said sarcastically, relaxing, and then immediately pushing himself back up at the rather unhealthy noise from the woman beneath him. "Sorry."  
  
"Forget it," she wheezed. As the breath whooshed back into her lungs, she continued, sounding a little healthier. "I would appreciate it, though, if you would find somewhere else for your hand to be."  
  
His hand jerked away from its previous position, placed rather carelessly in his haste to stop leaning on her, substantially above her waist, as if it had found itself on the business end of a Firaga.  
  
"Not like you got much there to worry about," he muttered sourly, very annoyed with the blush creeping into his face for the second time in a two- minute stretch. However, his annoyance was nothing compared to hers at this comment. His annoyance grew to rival hers, though, as she shifted her knee, bringing it up just far enough to cause considerable pain to a very sensitive portion of his anatomy.  
  
"What was that for?!" he exclaimed in a voice several octaves higher than normal. "It's true."  
  
"It is not!"  
  
"Is too."  
  
"Is not!'  
  
"I have eyes. I can see that it's true."  
  
"No, it isn't! I would know better than you, wouldn't I?"  
  
"I'll believe it when I see it. Or them, as it were."  
  
At this, his voice, finally lowered back to its normal pitch as the pain receded, rose to an even higher octave than before.  
  
"Dammit! Would you stop that?!"  
  
At this unlucky juncture, Steiner burst into the room, stopping first to knock the door, which Freya had earlier locked in the effort to guard against inside-out vampires and the like, from its hinges. Once through said door-turned-kindling, he stopped dead and stared at the odd spectacle of two of his comrades lying on the floor in a gap between two beds, in a rather...ahem...questionable position, and neither making any sort of a move to get out of it.  
  
"Hello, Steiner," Freya called dryly. "Did you manage to find your sock?"  
  
The man nodded mutely, now rather bemused at the apparent calm of the parties involved in this decidedly weird display.  
  
"That's good. Now, if it isn't too much trouble, do you think you could move one of these beds a little? We seem to have gotten ourselves rather stuck."  
  
"Don't ask how," Amarant added menacingly...at least, as menacingly as he could at that moment. Steiner raised an eyebrow, wondering briefly why the bounty hunter was currently sounding more like a boy soprano than like his ordinary self. Then, a few recollections came to him. First was the recollection that Amarant and Freya had a way of annoying each other essentially every time they spoke. Next came the realization that Freya could not have possibly enjoyed being landed on, particularly during the wee small hours of the morning. Third was the assumption that she had probably showed her displeasure with the entire situation in a rather physical way, a way that involved raising the pitch of the male voice by several octaves. As these meandered their way through his brain, he winced, a wave of sympathy washing over him. 'Poor fellow - no one deserves that.'  
  
As he pondered this, he went to work prying apart the beds. Finally, with a bit of time, some elbow-grease, a few yelps of pain from Freya as the heavy iron bed-frame was dragged over her tail, a frightened whimper from Steiner, who foresaw himself undergoing the same painful fate as Amarant as a result of this, and many, many profanities from that same Amarant, the disgruntled pair were freed.  
  
"Wow...it's true. You really don't appreciate how good a bad situation is until it gets worse, do you?" Freya commented, trying to pound some feeling back into her sadly-abused tail. Amarant glared at the world at large and at Freya in particular, not trying to pound some feeling back into his sadly-abused parts, as this would not have helped at all. Rather, it would have probably have just turned him back into a boy-soprano, and of course, no man ever wants that.  
  
"Hey, guys," another voice greeted from the doorway. "What's going on? You having a party?"  
  
"In the middle of the night? Zidane, we aren't...you," Freya replied pettishly, almost saying 'crazy,' but deciding upon the synonym at the last minute.  
  
"True," Zidane replied, stretching and yawning. "I'm one-hundred percent original. Won't ever be another Zidane Tribal."  
  
"Thank the gods," Amarant muttered, then started in surprise as he realized that two other voices, that of Steiner and that of Freya, had spoken this same prayer of thanksgiving. Apparently, Zidane heard this, too.  
  
"You guys are mean," he pouted, kicking the door aside, sidling into the room and plopping down on the nearest bed. "So, what happened in here, anyway? Did you need Steiner to help you move the beds so you could sleep on 'em? Hey, what were you doing until now, if you weren't sleeping? Is that how you broke the door?" The young Genome went of in a soundless fit of snickering. Freya, by now much too tired to attempt to end his life, simply sighed and sank wearily onto the other bed.  
  
"Why are you up, anyway?"  
  
"Steiner woke me up," Zidane replied, casting a frosty glare at the older man, who shrugged sheepishly.  
  
"I was merely concerned for Queen Garnet's safety."  
  
"What did you think I was gonna do?! Don't you know me at all?"  
  
"Yes, I do...which is exactly why I was worried."  
  
"Hey! What do you mean by that?!"  
  
The hackles of both men rose immediately as they scowled fiercely at each other. But before the argument could get too heated, it was interrupted by another, smaller voice calling out from the doorway,  
  
"Steiner? Is everything alright?"  
  
"Vivi!" that same knight admonished. "Did I not tell you to remain in the room where it is safe?"  
  
"Well, yeah," the small mage admitted, ambling into the room, "but you were gone an awful long time, and I didn't see what could be so dangerous about Amarant and Freya, anyway."  
  
"I suppose so," Steiner agreed with a sigh, then froze as a horrifying remembrance swept over him. "Uhm, Master Vivi," he began slowly, "did you take the key from the bureau when you left?"  
  
"Key?" Vivi choked. "U-um...no..."  
  
"Oh, dear," Steiner sighed. "I suppose we shall have to go awaken that poor overworked young man from his dream of Kupo-Nuts and ask him to open our door."  
  
"Hey, no need," Zidane proclaimed. "You two can crash with us. I'd say one of you could stay here, but-" He winked at Amarant. "-we should give these two crazy kids some alone-time."  
  
Amarant, who decided at these words that he, for one, was NOT too tired to try to end Zidane's life, hopped to his feet and advanced menacingly on the young man. Steiner, who decided that he, like Freya, WAS too tired for any more of this nonsense, leapt between the two.  
  
"Alright, Zidane, Vivi and I will spend the rest of the night in your room." And so it was decided.  
  
Except for one small hitch.  
  
"Oh! Hello, everyone!"  
  
Dagger smiled sleepily at the assembled party as she wandered into the room and sat next to Zidane on the bed, leaning her head against his shoulder and wrapping her arm around his waist. Zidane grinned madly at this, but Vivi was hardly so delighted as a thought occurred to him.  
  
"Z-z-zidane, do you or Dagger have a key for your room?"  
  
"Of course she does, Vivi! Why would Dagger leave the room without a key?"  
  
Dagger sat bolt upright at these words, snatching her arm back.  
  
"What do you mean, why would I leave without a key?! I thought you had one!"  
  
"Well, it was right there on the windowsill! Why would it have been there if I'd taken it?" Zidane shook his head, aggravated. It was late, and he was tired, and definitely not in the mood to take grief from anyone, beautiful woman and love of his life or not.  
  
"So I suppose the impromptu slumber party has been moved into here," Freya noted mildly, hiding a grin.  
  
"Oh, great. Like you're not annoying enough," Amarant groused. "Now I've gotta put up with them, too?"  
  
Freya shrugged  
  
"Well, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?"  
  
"More likely, what doesn't kill me will kill all of you," Amarant replied with a smirk.  
  
"Oh, I think we'll all live to see daybreak," she said, patting his arm consolingly.  
  
"The rest of us might," he replied meaningfully, glaring at her.  
  
"Hey, cool it, you two," Zidane admonished. "Yeah, I guess we're all moving in here until morning. Then we can get that kid to unlock our doors for us so we can get our junk and go."  
  
"Go where?" Dagger demanded crossly. Zidane rolled his eyes.  
  
"I don't know yet! We'll figure it out when it happens, okay?"  
  
"What a responsible way to live," the girl commented sarcastically.  
  
"I must say, Zidane, I agree," Steiner interjected with a nod. "It is best to have a plan, and then to act on it. Save your improvising for when the plan falls through."  
  
"Great! Well, if any of you HAS a plan, I'd love to hear it," Zidane announced, crossing his arms and pouting.  
  
"I'll tell you what we do," Amarant began, dropping back onto the mattress, next to Freya by necessity. "We go find that little red-headed bitch who destroyed the idiot with the cape, and we get her to break the charm on these cuffs. She's obviously damn powerful, if that blast she took down the inn with was any indication."  
  
An electrically charged silence fell as the simplicity, yet sensibility of the plan descended upon the group. Everyone stared for a moment at the bounty-hunter, who shrugged.  
  
"Just a thought."  
  
"I-it would work, except that s-s-she uses black magic," Vivi sighed mournfully.  
  
"So...?" Zidane gestured for Vivi to continue. "What does that matter?"  
  
Freya shook her head  
  
"A charm of that sort would be based in white magic, wouldn't it, Dagger?"  
  
"Most definitely. It isn't so much a charm as a protective spell, which is one of the greatest purposes of white magic: to protect and to heal."  
  
"Oh." Deflated, Zidane rested his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. Then he straightened back up again. "Well, we'll just have to think of something else, then. Maybe she'd know of a really good white mage we could talk to."  
  
"B-b-but Dagger's a really good white mage, and she couldn't break the spell," Vivi countered. Dagger smiled at the small boy, hardly ill-pleased by this.  
  
"Thank-you, Vivi!" Then she sobered again. "It isn't my area of expertise, though. I haven't experimented much with long-lasting charms bound to the energies of particular objects. I think, though, that Zidane has a point. Perhaps a very powerful sorceress would know at least where to begin looking for someone who could help us."  
  
"Yeah," Amarant agreed dryly. "Because, of course, all magic-users hang around together."  
  
Zidane glared at him.  
  
"It was your idea to go look for the little redheaded girl, Amarant. And anyway, this lead's all we got. Either we follow it up, or you and Freya learn to live with each other until we can come up with another option, 'cause you'll be staying that way for a loooooooooong time."  
  
"It was just an observation."  
  
"Yeah, well, I've had enough of your observations," Zidane snapped, rather unfairly, as the number of observations made by the man certainly hadn't been very large. Two, to be exact. "But you know what else I've had enough of? Being awake. Let's all do the smart thing and try to get to bed some time tonight, okay?"  
  
And so, after many grumbles, and a heated discussion of who was to take the beds after Amarant and Freya came to the conclusion that they would rather avoid their previous mishap by sleeping on the floor, the exhausted members of the small party made their way back into the land of dreams approximately two hours before the rise of the sun on a day that would undoubtedly hold untold adventure and mishap for all. After all, nothing can ever just go without a hitch for these people, can it?  
  
  
  
Ending notes 2: Okay, I suppose it really doesn't seem like it most of the time ('cept when I'm writing lemons. Uh...never mind.), but I really am an Amarant/Freya 'shipper - to an excessive degree. Really, really, really excessive. Quite incredibly excessive. OBsessive, really. 


	7. The Joys of Internal Monologue

Chapter 7 - The Tension Mounts...  
  
  
  
The sunlight streams through the window, bathing all within with its radiant glowing sunshiney-ness. This sunshiney-ness gently nudges to waking a young man perched on a chair next to the window, one bare foot hanging rakishly out said window, much to the chagrin of the small birds. These birds fall to the ground with a small 'thump' as the fumes rising from the appendage prove to be simply too much for them, and they passed into a state of unconsciousness. Apparently, not only the birds are critical of the young man's foot-hygiene. A nearby flower garden seems also rather critical, in that it had gone on something of a strike, utterly refusing to continue processing carbon dioxide into oxygen. Into the dew-moistened soil next to the plot of marigolds and daisies is stuck a sign, bearing the words, "Amalgamated Flora Union Local #24601 Says No More: Working Conditions Unsafe."  
  
Some yards away, a grove of shrivelled, dying trees also seems to be protesting the Foot of Doom.  
  
"Okay, Rhianwen, I'll put my sock back on," Zidane calls angrily, yet quietly, to the sky, taking his foot from the window, and then promptly falling back asleep.  
  
Across the room, it appears as though Vivi and Dagger have gotten the luck of the draw, so to speak, and have been awarded the privilege of beds. On the left-hand bed, Dagger is curled up, cuddling a pillow.  
  
"Aww..." you croon, hands clasped at the side of your face in delight at the sheer cuteness of this mental image.  
  
On the right-hand bed, Vivi is quite invisible to any spectators that may be spectating, as he is curled up under his hat.  
  
"Hee!" you giggle, though at the back of your mind wondering how he fit under there; after all, his hat isn't THAT big.  
  
A few yards from the bed, against the wall, Steiner is propped up in a sitting position, his behelmeted head slumped forward on his wife-beater- clad chest. A pair of boxers decorated brightly with little red tulips, and a pair of wool socks complete his ensemble.  
  
"AAARRGH!!!" you scream, trying to claw your eyes from your head to rid yourself of the mental image burned into them...or something.  
  
Close to the adjacent wall, Amarant and Freya have staked out a small section of floor to call their own for the time being. At first glance, it appears as though these two have finally learned to get along. Amarant is stretched out on his back, one arm wrapped protectively about Freya, who is nestled against his shoulder. When one looks more closely, though, one may observe that his other hand is wrapped lovingly about her throat, and that both her arms are stretched above her head, the hand not chained to his lovingly wrapped around his throat, the other wrapped around his wrist. Both are smiling in perfect contentment; what better way to fall asleep than trying to end the life of the other?  
  
"Uh...kay...Rhianwen, you're on crack," you comment to yourself, shaking your head, before continuing on with the story.  
  
  
  
"Ooh," Zidane groaned, climbing painfully to his feet and stretching. "Sleeping in a chair was a bad idea." He glanced about, and observed, pouting, that his comment had gone quite unappreciated by the rest of the room. "Hey! Guys!" he shouted, bringing his foot heavily down on the floor. The reverberations that this sent through the floor immediately jolted Steiner to wakefulness, and the knight bolted to his feet. "Oh, good. You're awake," Zidane commented, satisfied. Steiner glared back at him. "Yes, I had noticed."  
  
"Great; well, you start getting some of our stuff together, maybe see if that kid's awake to unlock the other rooms first. I'm gonna try to wake up everyone else and-" He trailed off as he noticed that Steiner's attention was elsewhere. "What's up, Rusty?"  
  
"Look at Amarant and Freya. Why are they sleeping like that?"  
  
Zidane's gaze swung in the direction that Steiner was pointing, and grinned hugely at the sight of his friends curled up peacefully in one another's arms. He reflected that maybe he'd been right; maybe they didn't simply 'tolerate' one another quite as much as they'd have both have liked to believe.  
  
"I don't know, man. Maybe you should ask then when they wake up."  
  
With this, he sauntered over to the bed from which the large yellow hat was protruding, and poked the massive brightly-coloured headgear. Uncurling slowly, Vivi sat up with a yawn.  
  
"Is it morning already?" he asked, blinking.  
  
"Yeah," Zidane replied. "Sorry, Vivi. We've gotta get moving pretty quick. I'm gonna wake everyone else. Why don't you go with Steiner to find that guy who has the keys?"  
  
Nodding, the small mage ambled out of the room after the boxer-clad Steiner, pausing briefly to wonder why the man wasn't wearing any pants. As they departed, Zidane crept over to Dagger's bed and placed a small kiss on her cheek. She smiled in her sleep, and turned over with a soft murmur.  
  
"Alright," Zidane decided aloud. "Plan B."  
  
He tapped her shoulder gently until her eyes opened. She started back, taking in a shocked breath.  
  
"Zidane!" she exclaimed. "What are you doing in my...oh, I remember now. We're all sharing one room. Oh! I hope I didn't wake anyone else," she concluded, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. Zidane laughed softly.  
  
"I doubt it. Amarant and Freya are the only ones still asleep, and I think it might take a lot to wake them up right now."  
  
"Why?" Dagger inquired, head tilted to the side. Zidane motioned to the wall.  
  
"Check it out."  
  
"Oh! How cute!" the dark-haired girl commented, eyes starry, hands clasped. Then she frowned. "Sort of."  
  
"Well, I'm gonna go try to wake them," Zidane announced, picking his way across the room through the scattered boots, gloves, hats, and other various and sundry possessions of the six travellers. He knelt down next to the sleeping pair, and hesitantly tapped Amarant lightly on the shoulder. The man didn't awaken, but he stirred slightly, and moved his hand from around the young woman's neck to the back of her head, his fingers curling tightly into her hair. Freya murmured sleepily, then shifted to nuzzle his palm with her cheek. Zidane watched, eyebrow raised.  
  
"Uh...kay. That was...weird."  
  
Then he tapped Amarant's shoulder again, a little less lightly. The bounty hunter grumbled as he opened his eyes.  
  
"What the hell do you want?" he demanded, trying to sit up, then stopping abruptly as he noticed the warm shape nestled against his side.  
  
"I'm just trying to get everyone woken up so we can all get our stuff together and get out of here," Zidane replied, suppressing a laugh, but not quite able to suppress a smile. "I'll let you wake her up," the young man announced, gesturing to Freya, before climbing to his feet and sauntering out of the room, followed closely by Dagger, who peered curiously at the pair on the floor one more time before departing.  
  
Amarant glared intently after both of them, and then down at Freya, just for good measure. The knowledge that no one could appreciate these glares, Zidane and Dagger because they had been turned away, and Freya because she was still asleep, set back the slight chances of his developing a good mood to no chance. Speaking of Freya...  
  
"Hey! Wake up and get the hell off of me!" he barked, shaking her. She made a noise of protest, then sat up, gazing about her, blinking and disoriented. He bit back a smile at the decidedly child-like expression, then remembered that he was supposed to be pissed off, and stalked away, pausing first to stand up.  
  
"...Ow," Freya reflected sadly, bumping over the wooden floorboards as she was dragged along behind. "That's about the third-worst way I've ever woken up."  
  
  
  
"Okay, guys, I think the first thing we should do is head back to the tavern," Zidane announced, glancing back over his shoulder as he strode down the wide dirt road, bordered on either side by expanses of rolling green meadow.  
  
"Uh...why?"  
  
Zidane came to a dead halt and glared at the source of the question. Amarant returned the glare steadily. Zidane sighed.  
  
"Why do you think? I wanna see if we can find out where that little red- head went. We don't really know anything about her-"  
  
"We know she's scary," Vivi reminded the Genome. Zidane sighed again, rubbing his eyes wearily.  
  
"Yes, Vivi, thank-you. We know she's scary. But, we don't know her name, or where she's from, or anything, so we should probably go ask around to see if anyone at the tavern last night does."  
  
"Zidane, after she destroyed their main source of alcohol, why would anyone want to help us find her, even if they did make it a point to remember her name?" Dagger asked impatiently.  
  
"I think, Your Highness," Steiner began thoughtfully, "that if anyone did know anything of our young friend, they still do. She does not seem an easy type of person to forget."  
  
"Right," Amarant muttered. "The type that goes about, blowing buildings sky-high."  
  
"I agree with Dagger, though," Freya spoke up, "that even if, as you say, they likely will remember her, they won't be overly inclined to help us find her. Or, if the worst happens, they may believe us to be friends of hers, and may form an angry mob, demanding revenge for their beloved tavern."  
  
"Maybe the inside-out vampires will be with them," Amarant suggested dryly. Zidane looked askance at him.  
  
"Inside-out vampires? Amarant, have you gone crazy?"  
  
"Stark-raving," the bounty-hunter replied, completely deadpan.  
  
"Uh...right," Zidane replied, edging away nervously. Then he sighed. "I wish Mr. Kaughnee would come back. He was really weird, but it's sure better than walking."  
  
"Zidane, you've travelled nearly the entire world by foot! How is it that you're whining over walking 30 miles to a town?" Dagger demanded with a sigh. Zidane shrugged.  
  
"It's too early."  
  
"Hmph! Well, it certainly wasn't MY idea to set out at the break of dawn!"  
  
"Yeah," Vivi agreed with the somewhat annoyed Alexandrian ruler. "I wanted to sleep more."  
  
"I quite agree," Steiner put in.  
  
"Yeah," Zidane admitted with mock sadness, "maybe we should have slept longer. I'm sure those two think so." He grinned at Freya, who blushed and looked away, suddenly becoming very fascinated by the scenery of fields and cows, and then at Amarant, who glared back. Nothing daunted, Zidane continued. "After all, they seemed pretty comfy down there on the floor, all cuddled up together."  
  
"Zidane," Freya began, rubbing her forehead wearily, "please stop talking right now, before I'm forced to rip your tail off and shove it down your throat."  
  
"Hey, that's pretty good," Amarant observed, almost smiling down at her. "I'll have to use it on you next time you won't shut up."  
  
"You don't want to know what I'll disconnect if YOU don't shut up," she intoned darkly. As one, Steiner, Zidane, Vivi, and Amarant flinched.  
  
"Freya, that was rather mean," Dagger commented, gazing reproachfully at the dragoon.  
  
"Well, what is a girl to do," she asked plaintively, "when the men of the world just won't shut up?"  
  
"I suppose," Dagger conceded with a reluctant nod. After all, she admitted freely to herself that there really were times when these men had to be kept in line, by whatever means necessary.  
  
  
  
From here on out, the journey from the secluded inn back into the town passed without incident, save for when the group had the ill luck to be attacked by a swarm of angry Bandersnatches. To be sure, this, too, should have been no problem for our band of incredibly experiencedc and skilled fighters, had Zidane not been rather insistent that Amarant and Freya, despite obvious reasons to reconsider this, should fight along with the rest of the group.  
  
However, being in a rather mischievous frame of mind, and desperate to alleviate the boredom, he did insist. Furthermore, his mischievous frame of mind led him to an absolutely absurd suggestion that Freya should jump, and was startled and dismayed when, acting entirely on instinct, she did so...and promptly came down again, directly upon the head of a hitherto very aggravated, and at this, utterly furious Amarant.  
  
Amarant's temper, although not flaring up in full force very often, was formidable when it did. As such, Freya promptly found herself seized by the back of the coat, and flung into the air...where, upon sailing straight out for a split second, the chain of the handcuffs stretched as far out as they could, and she reversed directions to crash once again into Amarant. Both went down with a tremendous thud. Their mingled groans of pain drifted up from the ground.  
  
Rolling her eyes and heaving a long sigh, Dagger started forward and held her staff out before her. Ribbons of light shot out from top of the staff and wound around the two unfortunate souls as she murmured a healing spell under her breath.  
  
All in all, no lasting damage was done, even to Zidane, who, once Amarant and Freya were back to consciousness and coherency again, found another attempt being made on his life. Still, the group decided unanimously that, perhaps, the rest had better handle the fighting from here on out.  
  
  
  
Once this conclusion was reached, the remainder of the journey passed much more easily, and before they knew it, the group found themselves sauntering up to a familiar pile of scrap wood.  
  
"Alright, there's the tavern," Zidane declared. "Let's start questioning people. Dagger, you can come with me and start questioning people around here. Steiner, why don't you and Amarant go further into town and see what you can find out. And Vivi and Freya, you two can just sorta wander around the countryside and talk to nice old ladies. See if you can snag us some corn-bread while you're at it," the young man finished, patting his growling stomach. Vivi sighed and gazed up at Steiner. Steiner merely shook his head in despair. No, he didn't even want to try.  
  
He glanced over at Freya, who made a similar gesture. Amarant?  
  
No, Amarant decided, too easy. Dagger rolled her eyes, not for the first time that day, and likely not for the last. Oh, the things a girl would put up with for the man she loved!  
  
"Zidane," she began very, very slowly. "Why are we here?"  
  
"To find that little red-headed girl," Zidane replied proudly. Dagger blinked.  
  
"Very good, Zidane. Now, why do we need to find this girl?"  
  
"Well, because she's a really powerful sorceress."  
  
"And WHY do we need a really powerful sorceress?"  
  
"To see if she can take us to a really powerful white mage."  
  
"I'm glad we're on the same page," Dagger commented dryly. "Now, here is the piece that connects everything. Why do we need a really powerful white mage?"  
  
"...To break the spell that that M-guy put on those handcuffs in his magic act."  
  
"And why is it necessary to do this?" Dagger continued, seeing that, indeed, the last question hadn't tied everything together in the mind of the young man as she had expected. Zidane pondered this last question for a moment.  
  
"'Cause Amarant's gonna kill me if we don't."  
  
The sound of teeth gritting filled the air.  
  
"And WHY is Amarant going to kill you if we don't?"  
  
"Y'know, I don't really know. I mean, he's joined at the wrist to a fairly good-looking girl; he should thank me, and the Magical Mr. What's- His-Name. His love life's more active now than it's probably ever been!"  
  
"You...really don't enjoy living, do you?" Steiner noted with a shake of his head at the glare that Freya sent Zidane, nearly burning two neat little holes in her hat where it hung over her eyes in the process.  
  
"No, he doesn't seem to," she agreed, trying to bolt after a quickly- retreating Zidane...and failing utterly. The glare changed destinations, and came to rest on Amarant.  
  
"Well? Aren't you going to help?"  
  
Amarant shrugged.  
  
"What can I say? When he's right, he's right."  
  
She blinked.  
  
"Erhm...what?"  
  
"It's about the closest thing."  
  
"...Being handcuffed to me as a result of a man who thinks he's a cat- magician is the closest thing you've had to a love life in..."  
  
"...Ever. Yeah, that's right."  
  
A pause.  
  
"You lead a sorry, sorry life, my f-mph!!!"  
  
To anyone out there who would ask why on earth the last bit of Freya's statement was utterly unintelligible, I would suggest trying to speak clearly with someone's mouth covering yours, particularly if tongues are involved, and see how well you fare. As to whether or not tongues were involved in this case, I shall leave that entirely to you and your imagination to decide; I'm certainly not going to ask them, 'Hey, guys, didja use tongues?'  
  
To me, that seems nothing more than an easy way to die.  
  
Erm...anyway...  
  
When the realization meandered through her mind that she was being kissed, quite remarkably well, by someone that was supposed to annoy her to distraction, she did what any sensible girl would have done: she decided that this was some sort of dream induced by severe and repeated impact to the head, that it would likely vanish soon, and that she should enjoy it before it did. Thus deciding, she wound her free arm around his neck, her other hand curled tightly around his, and returned the kiss most enthusiastically.  
  
Meanwhile, Amarant was pondering the distinct possibility that this was a challenge of sorts. To be sure, he had been the one to begin it, but only as an effective means to stop her from talking. And, it seemed to him, she had escalated it into an all-out battle to see who would be the first to back away. Well, damned if it would be him.  
  
'Heh-heh-heh...' ran Zidane's internal monologue. 'I knew it.'  
  
'Oh! How adorable!' Dagger thought, a small voice in her head warning her that to say it out loud would be to incur quite a bit of formidable wrath. '...Sort of...'  
  
'What are they doing? I wonder if it's sort of like what Dagger and Zidane were doing last night...I still don't know what Left-Foot-Yellow means...' Vivi finished silently with a small sigh.  
  
'Most unseemly behaviour for the middle of the street. Someone should put a stop to this,' Steiner decided, watching intently without making any sort of move to be the one to do the 'stop-putting.'  
  
'Oh, my...this is a long dream,' Freya noted. 'I'm not complaining, especially, although it is becoming rather difficult to breathe...rather an odd thing, in a dream.'  
  
'Damn...this just goes to show, you can never tell about the quiet ones.' Amarant made a mental note to remember these words of wisdom in days to come.  
  
'I...should probably stop them before they embarrass themselves,' Zidane mused. He strode over to the pair.  
  
"Hey! Guys!" he barked, swatting Amarant's shoulder. "Sorry to break up the party, but, y'know, we've gotta get going."  
  
"Fine," Amarant agreed coolly, not missing a beat. "Just had to find a way to shut her up first."  
  
"No more successful than trying to piss me off until I stopped speaking to you, I'm afraid," Freya informed him dryly, also composed as ever. Zidane shook his head. By the gods, he had strange friends! Then, briskly, he decided it was time to get back down to business. This silliness had gone on long enough. If no one else would redeem the situation and make something intelligent of it, it was up to him, Zidane Tribal, to do it himself. And do it he would.  
  
"So...Amarant, you and Steiner are taking the town, right? And Vivi and Freya are going to explore the countryside?"  
  
"AAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Dagger howled in a most un-queenly fashion.  
  
  
  
  
  
End Notes: [Sweatdrop] Alright, I think it just became a pseudo-romance. Hee-hee! I didn't plan that last page-and-a-half at all until it was out on paper...oh, fine. Microsoft Word. Let's not cloud the horizons with a bunch of semantic hair-splitting, alright? [Sigh] Well, depending on how the reviews treat this chapter, I may take it down and re-write it to be slightly less...blatantly 'shippery.  
  
Oh, yes; and the title of this chapter is a working title only until I can think up something ridiculously clever...or just ridiculous. Y'know, whichever comes first.  
  
And finally, I would just like to say that I do NOT hate Zidane. I don't know why I keep writing him like a lovable idiot in this story; I suppose it just feels natural. :o) 


	8. It's Not the Humidity, It's the Stupidit...

Chapter 8 - It's Not the Humidity; It's the Stupidity  
  
Notes: Finally! Rhianwen was able to tear herself away from her Chrono Trigger 'fic long enough to write a new chapter! I apologize for having taken so ridiculously long, and I shall endeavour to have Chapter 9 up before the cows come home. [Glances out the window to see a herd of cows approaching.] Uh-oh...  
  
  
  
  
  
"Zidane, is something wrong?" Vivi piped up as he tossed a vaguely key- shaped stone back into the pile of rubble. Certainly, Zidane did not look happy, and Vivi's brow wrinkled in concern at the droopy demeanour of the ordinarily upbeat thief. Zidane sighed.  
  
"Naw, not really..."  
  
"Oh." Vivi blinked. "Alright."  
  
Then, just as he settled himself on a larger slab of concrete rent from the rest of the structure and returned to pondering the nature of his hat and all things thus related, or something of the like, Zidane rushed onward, quite derailing the small boy's thought.  
  
"It's just that Dagger seemed so mad at me! I don't get it!"  
  
Steiner shook his head in disbelief, straightening up and halting his thorough examination of a much larger pile of rubble.  
  
"You...don't think that your idiotic suggestion of splitting up Amarant and Freya might have had something to do with it?"  
  
Zidane scowled.  
  
"Okay, I really don't see what was wrong with that idea! I mean, Freya and Amarant have been chained together for the last, like, eighteen hours! I just thought they could use a break from each other. I know they're...y'know, getting to know each other a little better and all, but you can't rush these things! All I was trying to do was help out my friends, and Dagger gets all mad at me! Sometimes I really hate people; they're nothing but heartless critics."  
  
"There, there, Zidane," Vivi sighed, patting Zidane's hand soothingly, a gigantic sweatdrop suspended in the air just to the right of his hat. "I'm sure that, in a while, everyone will see that you were only trying to help."  
  
  
  
"Erm...Dagger..." Freya called hesitantly to the exceedingly angry Alexandrian stalking onward down the dirt path that served as the main street of the town, several paces ahead of her and Amarant.  
  
Dagger stopped abruptly in front of the blacksmith's shop and turned.  
  
"Yes?" she asked tightly, a cloud of smoke billowing out of the open door and making for a rather ominous effect.  
  
Freya shook her head, choking back a baffled laugh.  
  
"Are you quite alright?"  
  
"Just fine," the younger woman replied even more tightly, turning on her heel and continuing onward in the same tense, clipped strides.  
  
"Somehow," Freya mused, gazing after her, "I don't quite believe her."  
  
At an irritated grumble, her gaze shot to the right.  
  
"What can you expect," Amarant demanded, "when she's just found out that the man she loves can be a complete and utter jack-ass?"  
  
"I suppose such a thing must be rather trying..." she admitted. He raised an eyebrow with a short laugh.  
  
"How did you deal with it?"  
  
"Excuse me?"  
  
"How did you deal with it when you found out that what's-his-name was one?"  
  
"One what?"  
  
"A jack-ass."  
  
"Oh, be quiet," Freya huffed, crossing her free arm and looking away. Then, after a moment, upon realizing what she had just done, she groaned in despair. 'If I start throwing things, too, and have the sudden urge to grow my bangs to cover my eyes, I'll have to find someone kind enough to assist me in ending my own life,' she reflected. Turning into Amarant. Gods, what a horrifying thought...  
  
"Hmph," Amarant hmphed, crossing his arm and looking away. He deliberately shoved from his mind the question of why it annoyed him so to hear her defending that memory-challenged twit. Twit? Since when did he use words like 'twit?' Gods, it sounded like something she'd say! 'If I start jumping on things and poking them with sticks, I'll have to pick a fight with a herd of angry Grand Dragons, armed with a fork. No way do I wanna live acting like her.'  
  
Meanwhile, it appeared to Dagger, who had glanced back to see what the tall warrior had said to offend his impromptu Siamese twin this time, that someone had held up a mirror between the two, and rather than two separate entities, it was the action of one reflected into a mirror, so exact was the timing of the gesture of arm-crossing. The completely unintentional humour of this sight banished a goodly portion of her own dark mood, and she relented, slowing down sufficiently that the bounty hunter and the dragoon could catch up with her.  
  
"Good to see you're in a lighter mood, Dagger," Freya noted dryly. Dagger smiled sheepishly.  
  
"Yes, well, I'm beginning to feel a little better, now that we're away from Zidane for a while. I don't think it's any secret to anyone that I love him like mad, but I do wish he wouldn't intentionally try to get a rise out of me like that!"  
  
"...Of course. He did it all for a reaction," Freya agreed with a nervous laugh, inwardly shaking her head and sighing. As long as the girl could believe that, it might keep her sane at least until they could get her back to Alexandria.  
  
"Well, of course he did it for a reaction," Dagger proclaimed, as though it were the most obvious thing on the planet. "There's no way that Zidane could honestly be stupid enough to suggest that the two of you split up right now!"  
  
"Not stupid, exactly," Freya began slowly. "Just...very sleep-deprived. After all, it has been a trying few days. And remember, he did sleep in a chair last night. Certainly, that can never be good for a person's health."  
  
"Oh, what does it matter? He simply said it to annoy me!"  
  
"Exactly," Amarant agreed, annoyed. "Now, can we drop it and have one god- damned second of quiet?"  
  
"Hmm..." Freya put a hand to her chin, as though giving the matter great thought. Then she looked up at him with a charming smile. "No."  
  
"...I hate you."  
  
"Yes, you've mentioned."  
  
"Hmph. At least you aren't calling me 'Pooky' this time. That's something, I guess."  
  
"Pooky?" Dagger raised an eyebrow. "What on earth happened with you two last night?"  
  
"Don't ask," Freya suggested coldly.  
  
"Eep! Alright," Dagger agreed nervously. "So...do either of you have any idea where this inn-keeper might live?"  
  
"Probably above his inn," Amarant suggested with a snort.  
  
"So, in other words, nowhere at the moment," Freya paraphrased cheerfully.  
  
Dagger looked at her strangely.  
  
"That's it. You're just far too perky today. No more coffee for you for a good long time."  
  
"What does coffee have to do with anything?" Freya demanded, hands on her hips, quite offended. Amarant jerked in protest as his own hand brushed against her leg. Then both went off into another soundless round of blushing and looking away. Dagger rolled her eyes.  
  
'I think I'm beginning to understand why everyone was always reluctant to be sent out with Zidane and I...'  
  
  
  
"Zidane, how long do we have to sift through random piles of rock, looking for this key that we're NEVER GOING TO FIND?!!!" Steiner, finished with his rant, dropped to the ground in a crouch, panting and exhausted. Zidane shrugged, hopping easily from his perch on a remaining bit of framework.  
  
"I dunno...another hour or so?"  
  
With a sigh, Vivi murmured to no one in particular,  
  
"I wonder if the others are having any better a time than we are...'  
  
Then, recalling comfortingly that Dagger had been awfully angry, and that Amarant was not particularly happy at the best of times, Vivi concluded that Freya, at least, must be as miserable as he currently found himself. His attention was drawn rapidly back to Steiner and Zidane as an enraged howl from the former split the air.  
  
"Whoa, Rusty, enough of the over-acting, alright?" Zidane requested, hands held up in a calming gesture. The older man fell eerily silent.  
  
"Zidane," Steiner bit out after a long, uncomfortable silence. "We have been here for two hours already. We have, literally, left no stone unturned. WHY IN BLAZES MUST WE REMAIN HERE ANOTHER HOUR, MERELY TO LANGUISH FURTHER IN THIS INSANE HEAT, WHICH, ODDLY ENOUGH HAS NOT BEEN AT ALL MENTIONED UNTIL NOW?!!!"  
  
"Uh...'cause?" Zidane replied snippily.  
  
"'Cause why?" the knight moaned wearily.  
  
"'Cause I say so," the young thief grinned. Then he continued, amid a simultaneous groan of despair from the other two members of his excavation team. "No, guys, we have a reason for being here. Just trust me, okay?"  
  
Stealing a quick glance at one another, Steiner and Vivi nodded hesitantly.  
  
"O-okay. We trust you, Zidane," Vivi said, adjusting his hat.  
  
"Just don't make us regret it," Steiner growled, not adjusting his.  
  
"Hey, when have you ever regretted trusting me?" Zidane demanded, crossing his arms and leaning sideways against a well-charred wooden post.  
  
"Do you want that in alphabetical order, chronological order, or order of severity?" Steiner asked with a sigh.  
  
"Never mind, Steiner," Vivi whispered, tugging on the knight's arm to get him to stoop enough to hear. "Let's just...keep an open mind. After all, what could possibly happen?"  
  
Ah, Vivi, you have committed the cardinal sin...  
  
  
  
"Good afternoon, Miss," Dagger greeted the elderly woman behind the counter with a formal bow, inconspicuously sniffing appreciatively at the scent of freshly-baked bread hanging heavily in the air. 'I just love kitchens!'  
  
"Yeah, she blends right into the woodwork," Amarant muttered to Freya as they strode into the bakery behind the young Alexandrian ruler. At his words, Freya merely stared incredulously up at him, down at their handcuffs, and then shook her head, deciding that to answer at all was to completely and utterly set herself up. After all, he likely wouldn't appreciate having the proverb of the pot and the kettle related to him at this particular point in time.  
  
"Good afternoon, yerself," the old woman greeted irritably, brushing from her eyes wisps of grey hair escaping from the red and white checked kerchief tied around her head. "You mightn't think so if you'd been the one to spend most of a day hot enough to melt a brass monkey in front of an oven."  
  
"Of course, roaming around under that same hot sun, improvising on a plan of action is much better," Freya murmured. The baker, unnaturally sharp of hearing, glared at her.  
  
"If you don't dress for the weather, girl, it's no one's fault but your own."  
  
Beneath her hat, Freya's eyes widened.  
  
"Excuse me?! How I dress is my own business!"  
  
"Then don't come crying to me when you overheat and pass out!"  
  
"What?! How would I be going to anyone, let alone doing so crying, if I had passed out?"  
  
"Alright, out of my shop with you!" The old woman mopped her forehead on an apron liberally sprinkled with flour, then delivered a frosty glare to Amarant, who smirked, amused, at the streak of flour thus left behind on said forehead. Then she turned slightly - very slightly - to glare at Freya again. "And take yer friend with you!"  
  
"Wait, ma'am!" Dagger pleaded desperately. "I'm sure they didn't mean to offend you!" This statement she punctuated with a warning glance shot in their direction. "And I'm sure, now that they know that they have, they'll be more than willing to apologize!"  
  
"Apologize?" Amarant snorted in disbelief. "For what?"  
  
"For dragging this poor, over-worked soul into an argument, and then making fun of her to top it off! You both should be ashamed!"  
  
As the old woman's face grew redder, her expression angrier rather than more appeased, one may be quite sure that Amarant and Freya were both rather more amused than ashamed, foreseeing quite accurately what was to come.  
  
"Well, of all the patronizing, uppity little - out of my store, all of you! Don't make me call the mayor! Out! Out this instance!"  
  
As she delivered this biting little speech, the three startled travelers were treated to the rather curious spectacle of a short, fat little woman, swathed in brown with a turkey-red apron, with flour powdered about her face and through the front of her grey hair, waving a rolling pin menacingly at them. As menacing as a rolling pin ever gets, at any rate.  
  
"Alright, don't get your pastry in a twist," Amarant muttered, before stopping to ponder what in the hell he could have meant by such a blatantly stupid comment. Then, shaking his head and deciding that it must be the first signs of heat-stroke, he sauntered, quite maddeningly slowly, from the shop. With a shrug, Freya turned to follow.  
  
"We're really very sorry," Dagger choked out one last time before darting from the small building after her quite alarmingly unapologetic friends.  
  
  
  
"Oh, hey, guys!" Zidane called as he noticed three familiar shapes approaching the remains of the tavern, which he had arbitrarily claimed as their new temporary hide-out. A frown wrinkled his forehead as he noticed the decided slouch in Dagger's posture. The poor girl would give herself back problems if she didn't watch out! Had being separated from him for so long depressed her that much?! Well, he would just have to make sure it didn't happen again. He wrapped a comforting arm around her, only adding to her discomfort, as a sweaty arm thrown about already uncomfortably warm shoulders is bound to do. Zidane, however, did not know this, and as such, completely missed the barely tolerant sigh that escaped the young woman as he continued on. "Didja have any luck?"  
  
"Well," Amarant began thoughtfully. "We learned that all the people in this town are idiots."  
  
Zidane laughed easily, removing his arm from around Dagger's shoulders and vaulting lightly up onto a large block of stone behind him.  
  
"Oh, c'mon, Amarant! You think all people everywhere are idiots! I mean, did you learn anything new? Hopefully about where the tavern owner lives?"  
  
"Yes, Zidane," Freya interjected wearily, wondering uneasily where Vivi and Steiner had run off to. "He's staying with his sister and her husband in a nearby town fifty miles over."  
  
"Alright! So, we leave first thing tomorrow, right?"  
  
"Why wait?" Amarant demanded crossing his arm and reflecting glumly that it would probably take him weeks to get back into the habit of crossing both once these damn cuffs came off. Zidane crossed his own arms, and thus earned the envy of the tall red-head, and looked away huffily.  
  
"Hey, man, I don't know about you three, but Vivi and Rusty and I spent most of today working like dogs here!"  
  
"Right," Dagger sighed. "Is that what those are from?"  
  
She pointed off to her right at three small vaguely humanoid shapes built from varying sizes of rocks, twigs stuck into the sides to represent arms, and faces drawn on with the mythical - and very expensive - Pearl Rouge, as Dagger noted with a despairing sigh. On top of the head of each small, crudely made statue was perched one of the groups left-over 'community hats.'  
  
"Please tell me you three didn't spend the entire afternoon making little rock-snowmen," Freya groaned in dismay. Zidane rolled his eyes.  
  
"Freya! If they're made out of rock, they're called rock-men, simple as that! Not rock-snowmen!"  
  
"That's what I thought," she sighed. "So, where are Vivi and Steiner, anyway?"  
  
"Did they perhaps...get fed up with your play-time and leave?" Dagger suggested, more than a little miffed.  
  
"No way! The whole rock-men thing was Steiner's idea in the first place. But, y'know, by the time we found the right size of rocks, hauled 'em over here, built the little guys, and found all the decorations we needed, we were all starving! This kind of thing really works up an appetite. So, I sent Steiner and Vivi out for food. Told 'em to try to find some corn- bread, if they could. They should be getting back any time now."  
  
As if on cue - although it wasn't - not in the slightest [Rhianwen tosses her mini tape recorder aside and whistles innocently] - a large knight clanked onto the scene.  
  
"Well, Steiner's back. But what'd he do with Vivi? And what's that walking traffic cone beside him?" Zidane mused aloud.  
  
Amarant shot Dagger and Freya each a pleading glance.  
  
"May I?"  
  
"Go ahead," Dagger encouraged.  
  
"By all means," Freya agreed.  
  
Nodding his satisfaction, Amarant stepped forward and delivered a smack upside Zidane's head. The young man yelped in pain, then blinked rapidly.  
  
"Whoa! What just happened? Where am I?" Then he sighed. "Are we STILL here? Why haven't we left for the tavern-guy's sister's place yet?"  
  
"You're the one who wanted to stay the night, Zidane," Dagger reminded him. His brow wrinkled in a frown.  
  
"I...did?"  
  
"Like anywhere in this town's gonna house us. By now, that crazy baker- woman's probably spread word of us," Amarant mutterd. Dagger glared.  
  
"And just whose fault is that?"  
  
"Hey, enough, okay?" Zidane protested. "I think we've wasted enough time already."  
  
"U-um...why did Zidane suddenly get so responsible?" Vivi piped up, confused, hefting the small burlap sack of cornbread over his shoulder.  
  
"I shall field that question, Master Vivi," Steiner declared. Then he turned to address the rest of the group. "You see, when Amarant delivered that blow upside his head, it seems that Zidane was miraculously knocked back into character."  
  
"Thank the gods," Freya murmured. To be sure, Dagger's reaction to this altered version of her long-time friend had been amusing, but there was really only so much a person could take of Zidane when he got like this without losing all grasp on sanity.  
  
Dagger, meanwhile, was gazing, shiny-eyed, at Zidane, her hands clasped in front of her.  
  
"Could it be...? Zidane, are you back at last?"  
  
The fair-haired thief's eyebrow arched upwards.  
  
"Back? I didn't go anywhere."  
  
"Well, a small improvement's better than none," Dagger noted out loud, shoulders slumping slightly.  
  
"Uh...right," Zidane agreed, his other eyebrow joining the first one in his hairline. "Let's head off, alright? We'll camp somewhere along the side of the road when it gets dark. Everyone good with that?"  
  
A collective sigh of relief rose from the rest of the group. And so it was decided. Climbing from the rubble pit that was left of the tavern, our merry little band of travelers set out for their new destination - the home of the tavern owner's sister - with flames of renewed hope flickering in their hearts. Would this hope last, or would it, like the hope that had come before it, be ruthlessly snuffed out by circumstances horrific, terrifying, or just plain stupid? Read on to find out.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
End Notes: Whoo! The 'plot advancement' chapter! Trust me, it'll be more entertaining again in Chapter 9. Much more 'shippery, too. [Giggles] And, as Dagger will be in a much better mood once she gets out of that hot sun, the Zidane/Dagger fans who may be reading will be quite mollified, as well.  
  
Oh, and as for the 'Amarant-knocking-Zidane-back-into-character' thing, I found, upon re-reading, that this story was becoming altogether too much a Zidane-bashing campaign. Henceforth, I shall endeavour not to bash the poor boy any more than I do any other character.  
  
And once again, thank-you so much to all the kind souls out there who are reading this. 


	9. Till the Mad Cows Came Home

Chapter 9 - 'Til the Mad Cows Came Home  
  
  
  
Author's Notes: [Glances about the room at the several cows milling about, then sighs in despair] Well, I took too long with this chapter, and...you guessed it. The cows came home. Now, this chapter isn't nearly as long as it was going to be, but is longer than some have been.  
  
  
  
"I see a bad moon risin'," Steiner carolled merrily, shattering the silence of the peaceful evening, much to the chagrin of everyone else, as he jaunted merrily along the dirt path. "I see trouble on the way..."  
  
"Um...Steiner," Vivi attempted to interrupt.  
  
"I see earthquakes and lightning," the oblivious knight continued, every bit as oblivious as the previous description suggested.  
  
"At least he's not singing 'Gehen Sie zu mir, meine liebe Socke zurück' again," Freya murmured consolingly. Mostly trying to console herself.  
  
"Steiner!" Zidane barked, to no avail.  
  
"I see mad cows today!"  
  
"What?!" the young man exclaimed. "Mad cows? What are you talking about?"  
  
"Those are the words to the song," Steiner informed him, much aggrieved.  
  
"No, they're not!"  
  
"Of course they are!"  
  
"No, Steiner, they really aren't," Dagger informed him. He crossed his arms and gazed at her sceptically.  
  
"Well, what are they, then?"  
  
"I...don't know," Dagger admitted slowly, "but I KNOW they aren't 'I see mad cows today.'"  
  
"Yeah," Amarant agreed. "That would make the song even stupider than it already is."  
  
"Oh, come, now! It's a classic!" Freya protested.  
  
"A stupid classic."  
  
"What is so stupid about it?" she demanded.  
  
"Just think about the words," he scoffed before quoting in disgust, "'there's a bathroom on the right.'"  
  
Freya blinked in surprise.  
  
"Uh...what?"  
  
"The words in the chorus."  
  
"...That isn't what they are."  
  
"What? Of course it is."  
  
"No, it isn't. Give the poor band some credit! The line is, 'there's a bad moon on the rise,' hence the name of the song, 'Bad Moon Rising.'"  
  
"Yeah, Amarant. Seriously! Don't you ever read the lyric sheets?"  
  
"...Lyric sheets?"  
  
"Yeah! Inside the CDs!"  
  
"...CDs?"  
  
"Zidane!" Dagger hissed, trying frantically to get the young man's attention.  
  
"What's up, Dagger?"  
  
"We're getting all anachronistic again! We don't know what CDs are!"  
  
"Oh...right," Zidane grinned sheepishly. "Can we forget that last bit?"  
  
"How about we forget this whole damn day?" Amarant suggested, scowling fiercely at the setting sun sinking behind the firs of the forest up ahead.  
  
"I certainly agree," Freya added.  
  
"M-me, too," Vivi piped up adorably.  
  
Dagger shook her head with a sigh.  
  
"I would like to, as well, but if we did that, then we'd have to start back at the inn this morning, and the day could very well go once again just as it did the first time! And this day is NOT one that I want to re-live, whether or not I remember the first time around!"  
  
"True," Amarant admitted. "If we had to do this day again, I'd gnaw off my own hand to get out of these damn cuffs and away from all of you people."  
  
"Hmph!" Freya stated predictably.  
  
"Hey, look on the bright side, Freya," Zidane suggested consolingly. "At least he didn't threaten to gnaw off your hand."  
  
"I hadn't thought of that. Makes more sense," the redhead announced coolly, smirking inwardly at her outraged expression.  
  
"This is going to be a long walk," Vivi predicted gloomily.  
  
"I hear ya, Hatman," Zidane replied, nodding.  
  
Everyone stared askance at Zidane. Then, shaking his head, Steiner stepped forward and delivered a mighty smack across the young man's face. Giving his own head a shake to clear it, Zidane shot Steiner a small smile.  
  
"Thanks, man. I needed that. I could feel myself slipping back out of character again."  
  
No one replied aloud, but it is certain that the fear that this would not be an isolated incident was not far from the minds of any of the weary travellers.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Zidane, might I suggest calling a halt for the evening?" Steiner spoke up a little more than an hour later. By now, the sun had completely disappeared beyond the horizon, and it was certainly becoming very dark. The situation was little helped, of course, by the fact that, not long after we last left them, our heroes had entered the forest looming up ahead over the path. And so, they found themselves following a dirt road right through the middle of a thickly growing forest.  
  
"Sure, now's as good a time as any," Zidane agreed with a philosophical shrug.  
  
They moved off of the road and back into the forest until they came to a clearing suitable to set up camp in.  
  
"This looks like as good a place as any, don't you think?" Dagger noted, tossing her pack to the ground. Now, who wants to come with me to look for firewood?"  
  
"I shall accompany you, Your Majesty," Steiner hastened to offer. Dagger nodded, and they set off into the woods.  
  
"Alright; now, what do the rest of us do until they get back?" Zidane mused aloud.  
  
"Enjoy the quiet?" Amarant suggested from the tree that he was propped up against. Zidane chuckled quietly at the sight of Freya trying to lean against the tree next to him, with much less success.  
  
"How can you find this comfortable?" she demanded, a rasping sound filling the clearing as she shifted uncomfortably against the rough wood. "I've got branches poking into my back, and little bits of bark sticking to me, and..."  
  
"There's an art to it, rat," he replied smugly. "It looks very simple to the untrained eye, but there are many secrets and techniques that must not be taken for granted."  
  
"Er...I'm sure there are," she said slowly, shooting Zidane a look that clearly pleaded, 'Help me out here! He's insane! Insane, I tell you! INSAAAAAAAAAAAAANE!!!'  
  
This rather expressive look was quite ignored by the young man, to whom a thought had just occurred, judging from the way his face lit up, electricity nearly crackling in the air around him.  
  
"Vivi!" he exclaimed whirling to face the blue-cloaked mage, dropping to the ground and leaning in until their faces were inches apart.  
  
"U-um, yes, Zidane?" the small boy inquired hesitantly, backing up slightly.  
  
"Do you still have that sack of cornbread?"  
  
"Yeah!" Vivi announced proudly. "It's right here."  
  
He dropped a small burlap sack to the ground, and with a joyful yelp, Zidane leapt upon it, hauling out several bits of the fluffy yellow bread and tossing one to each of his friends currently present.  
  
"Make sure you save some of that for Steiner and Dagger," Freya admonished, slightly concerned that, from the way the sack was emptying beneath the fair-haired boy's appetite, the knight and the summoner might find themselves going hungry.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, I will," Zidane assured her around a mouthful of cornbread.  
  
"No, he won't," she sighed as the sound of two voices, one male and one female, shouting at each other, grew nearer.  
  
Zidane frowned.  
  
"Who's that?" he wondered. "Normally, I'd say Amarant and Freya in a shot, but they're right there, so..."  
  
"Oh, shut up, Zidane," Freya requested, huffily, crossing her free arm. Amarant nodded, satisfied. She was coming along nicely. A few more days, and she might have the gesture mastered, if she continued to progress as she had been.  
  
"Steiner!" the female voice barked. "For the last time, 'Bad Moon Rising' does not have a meaning, other than the end of the world! More specifically, the 'hidden meaning' of the song is NOT my mother's skirt slipping down!"  
  
She whirled about to glare at the black mage, the thief, the dragoon, and the bounty hunter, all trying desperately to hold back laughter, with varying degrees of success.  
  
"It isn't funny!" she insisted.  
  
"Of...of course it isn't, Dagger," Freya agreed lightly. "But...erm, just out of curiosity, how did the subject come up, exactly?"  
  
"You weren't singing again, were you, Steiner?" Amarant demanded suspiciously.  
  
The older man nodded miserably. Zidane threw up his hands with a groan of dismay. Amarant merely rolled his eyes, as did Freya. Dagger nodded grimly.  
  
"B-but I like Steiner's singing," a small voice piped up.  
  
"Why, thank-you, Master Vivi!" the Knight of Pluto exclaimed, flicking a tear from his eye, overcome by emotion at this unexpected confirmation.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, his singing's decent," Zidane agreed, "but Steiner, you've really got to stop reading into everything you sing!"  
  
"Exactly," Freya agreed. "After all, sometimes a Gyshal Pickle really is just a Gyshal Pickle. Oh, will you stop it?!"  
  
This last bit was aimed toward blond youth, who had begun to snicker insanely at the word 'pickle.' With a cherubic expression, Zidane fell silent...for a grand total of three seconds, before he was overcome by giggles again.  
  
"I'd ask someone to knock him back into character," Dagger mused with a sigh, "but this is pretty much IN character for him."  
  
"'Pickle,'" Zidane repeated once again with a chuckle. Then, sobering, he held the canvas sack out to Dagger and Steiner. "We saved you guys some cornbread," he announced proudly, shooting Freya a smug glance.  
  
"It's empty," Dagger announced slowly, raising an eyebrow. "Oh, well. I'm not especially hungry."  
  
"Nor am I, Your Majesty," Steiner agreed. "I must say, though, you really ought to learn to be a little more open to others' interpretations on matters of literature. Without seeking the hidden meanings, you miss much."  
  
"Yes," Dagger agreed tiredly. "With literature, perhaps. But it's a song, Steiner! Not even a very good song!"  
  
"Don't let the author hear you say that," Zidane suggested mildly. "She's a huge CCR nut."  
  
"Well, yeah," Amarant snorted. "Why else would we have spent five damn pages talking about it?"  
  
"Temporary insanity?" Freya suggested tiredly. Ignoring them utterly, Dagger continued, seating herself on a log.  
  
"And even for the sake of argument, Steiner, there is no way that the bad moon rising is a symbol of the moral decline of society, the invertedness of the symbol indicating the wrongful acceptance of this decadent lifestyle! Invertedness isn't even a real WORD, for crying out loud! The song is talking about the end of the world, and that is ALL!"  
  
"Ah! The end of the world!" Steiner repeated, plunking down on the log opposite Dagger. "A veritable plethora of symbols can be drawn from the phrase, 'the end of the world.' It could be the end of an era, the end of an abiding law or morality. Or..."  
  
"Or it could just be the end of the world!" Dagger insisted.  
  
"Geez...how does Beatrix stand him?" Zidane wondered aloud.  
  
"Maybe his...'pickle' is larger than average," Freya suggested without thinking. Then, as the wild laughter of Zidane and the surprised chuckle Amarant reached her ears, she made a definite mental point to keep her mouth shut when she was too tired to control exactly what came out of it.  
  
"No one writes something with only one meaning! There is always something deeper suggested, even if the author is not completely conscious of putting it in!"  
  
"The meaning, Steiner, is the end of the world!" Dagger exclaimed, dropping her head to her hand in despair, knowing full well that it wouldn't be the end. And she was very, very correct.  
  
"The surface meaning, yes," Steiner agreed, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees.  
  
"The WHOLE meaning!"  
  
"Only the surface!"  
  
  
  
"Ack! Where are we going?" Freya demanded as she felt an all-too-familiar, but none-too-gentle tug on her wrist.  
  
"I've gotta get away from these idiots," Amarant stated, heaving a long sigh. "Are the words to some damn song really that important?"  
  
"Not important enough to have a heated argument about in the middle of the forest, close to the middle of the night," Freya replied, shaking her head sadly. "Alright. Let's be off, then, shall we?"  
  
Amarant shrugged one shoulder, rather awkwardly, as he was not nearly so adept at it as of yet as he was at crossing one arm, and they set off into the forest.  
  
"Hey, where do you think they're going?" Zidane inquired of no one in particular, watching his friends disappear among the trees with barely repressed glee.  
  
"What?" Dagger glanced briefly at him. "Oh; I don't know." Then she turned back to her argument with the knight. "Steiner, I still don't know how you can honestly believe that any self-respecting song writer would write into his song the lyrics, 'I see mad cows today!'"  
  
"It could be metaphorical," the man replied huffily.  
  
"For what?!"  
  
"The pain of seeing one's cows go mad?" Zidane suggested sarcastically, quite taken aback when Steiner nodded, impressed.  
  
"Yes, Your Majesty, I agree with Zidane. It could be symbolic for the pain of seeing one's cows go mad."  
  
An incoherent whimper of pain escaped the throat of the young Alexandrian woman, melting into a sigh of contentment as Zidane's arm snaked around her waist, his other hand stroking her hair soothingly.  
  
  
  
Meanwhile, Amarant pushed roughly between two trees, and stopped, staring out in astonishment at the scene before his eyes. Freya, not being quite prepared for this sudden stop, walked headlong into him, shouted a quick curse, glanced around him, curious at what had captured his attention so fully...and then caught her breath as the loveliness of the spectacle captured hers as well.  
  
It was a lake, fairly large, and fringed on all banks with long grasses, waving gently in the light breeze, the moonlight infusing them with an ethereal beauty that made them seem threads of milky white to be woven into a fairy-tapestry, used to keep warm the child-spirits of the forest. The lake itself was perfectly calm, still, clear, glassy. The reflection of the moon glinted off of it, like finely polished silver.  
  
The romance in the air was nearly palpable, sparks flying between them like magical fireflies of pure enchantment, and it seemed to the two of them that they were the only people left in the world. And, at that moment, perhaps they were. Or not. It didn't matter. The whole thing had simply been a passing observation. Uh...anyway...  
  
Their eyes met. And they knew. As one, they moved to do the only thing that could be done at such a moment as this.  
  
  
  
"Hey, guys!" Zidane called several minutes later, fiddling with a leaf as Amarant and Freya emerged from the forest. "What were you doing in there for so long?"  
  
"The only thing that could be done," Amarant replied, shrugging his shoulder somewhat less awkwardly than the first time he had tried it.  
  
The young man's eyes widened. So, they had talked about that...decidedly odd incident on the road yesterday! Making sure to do so softly so as not to wake Vivi, Steiner, and Dagger, who had eventually ceased their pointless bickering and opted for the healthier option of sleep, he climbed to his feet from the log upon which he had been seated and threw an arm around each of his friends, insinuating himself within the tight space that the chain of the handcuffs left between them.  
  
"Oh, man, congratulations, both of you! So, when's the wedding?"  
  
"Wedding?" Freya repeated, a frown of confusion wrinkling her brow. "What are you on about?" Then she blinked. "What exactly do you imagine we were doing?!"  
  
"Well...what WERE you doing?" Zidane countered, suddenly unwilling to voice his suspicions, a tiny part of his mind warning him that his guess had been incorrect, and to voice it might be to rain certain death down upon himself.  
  
"As Amarant said, we were doing the only thing that could be done when one stumbles upon a still, clear, moonlit lake in the middle of the night with a...er, close friend!"  
  
"Exactly! So..."  
  
"We were skipping stones!"  
  
Zidane's face fell, the motion manifesting itself through his shoulders, arms, and back as he slumped forward in dismay. With a chuckle, Amarant led Freya back toward the fire.  
  
"Er...I hate to be a nitpicker," she began slowly, lifting one hand, "but why do you always get to lead?"  
  
"Uh...what?"  
  
"Read the narration, Amarant. Once again, it has clearly stated that YOU led ME back to the fire. I don't understand it!"  
  
"...Narration?" the tall man repeated, scratching his head, bewildered. "I think you're just too damn tired. First, you start speculating on Steiner's pickle, now this. Get some sleep, alright?"  
  
"Well, alright, but I still don't think it's fair," Freya replied, crossing one arm briefly before sitting in front of the leaping, twisting flames of the bonfire. Given little choice in the matter, he sat down next to her, and glanced sideways, the shadows from the fire flickering over his face, as something occurred to him.  
  
"So...why exactly did you tell Zidane that we were skipping rocks?" he inquired, a hint of a smile playing about the corners of his mouth as he absently traced random patterns over the back of her hand with his thumb. Freya repressed a grin with great difficulty as she snuggled comfortably against his shoulder.  
  
"Well, I couldn't tell him what we were REALLY doing, could I?" 


	10. An Unguided Tour Through Wesley Manor

Chapter 10  
  
  
  
Warning: Within the next 3 or so chapters, there will be a LOT of bad 'haunted house' clichés. More than one character may abandon their own characterization momentarily to stutter out a ScoobyDooesque "G-g-g- ghosts!"  
  
Vague Crossover Warning - If our illustrious heroes should chance, within the aforementioned next three chapters, to meet a dark-haired, red-caped, pasty coffin-dweller who has made a mistake in exactly WHICH big, scary mansion his coffin is in, take this as a sign that Rhianwen has become a little too obsessed with Final Fantasy 7...particularly if he expresses disappointment that there is no cute little ninja girl with the particular spiky blond haired lad who has chanced upon his coffin. ^_^  
  
  
  
  
  
"...Wow. That's...quite a house, isn't it?" Zidane observed, his brow wrinkled in slight consternation at the sight of the large, many-turreted, gloomy, and decidedly spooky-looking castle, the sky above it shrouded with heavy, sulky grey clouds, occasionally split in twain by bolts of lightning.  
  
"It...is, isn't it?" Dagger agreed, clutching Zidane's hand in one of hers. Seconds later, she felt a small hand work its way into her other hand. She glanced down to see the tiny black mage staring, wide-eyed and frightened at the house. After flashing him a sympathetic smile, she turned back to the house. "So, do you think that's where the inn-keeper's sister lives?"  
  
"With our damn luck," Amarant muttered. "Everyone in there's probably dead. This whole thing's probably been a wild goose chase, which means I'll probably be stuck with this damn rat for even longer."  
  
"Oh, and of course, you're such pleasant long-term company," Freya snapped back. "Hmph!"  
  
"Hmph!" he echoed as both turned emphatically away from one another. If one chanced to look more closely, though, one might have noticed that their hands were, as well as being joined by the cuffs, clasped tightly together.  
  
"Well, we shan't know until we go to investigate. So, shall we?" Steiner suggested, already stalking up the long, winding path, enclosed on either side by high, sturdy black wrought iron fences. Another well-timed bolt of lightning illuminated the sky above the second the knight set foot onto the path, causing him to jump back, alarmed, and then, with a shake of his head, muttering to himself that he was being ridiculous, start back up the path.  
  
"Steiner's right," Freya announced. "Standing here and talking about everything that might go wrong certainly won't get our problems solved." . "Okay, then, let's go see who lives here," Zidane suggested, following Steiner.  
  
"Let me just say now, if guy we're looking for isn't here, when we do find him, I'm gonna throw him so far, he hits...a shadow of some sort," Amarant spoke up coolly, starting after the rest of the group.  
  
"Of course you will," Freya sighed.  
  
"Hey, check it out, everyone!" Zidane called from up ahead. "There's a light!"  
  
Hope once again renewed within the hearts of our heroes, as one they broke into a run, tearing up the twisting lane, being careful as they did so not to crash headlong into the spiky, rather cruel-looking iron fence.  
  
The first to reach the door, Steiner lifted the heavy iron ring threaded through the knocker bearing the shape of a forebodingly glaring dragon's head, and let it fall back into place with a tremendous crash.  
  
"Now, if the owners didn't hear that," Zidane commented lightly, "they've gotta be dead."  
  
"I'm afraid that they might be even if they do come to the door," Dagger added nervously, eyes glued to a crooked headstone protruding from the ground, bearing the epitaph, 'I Told You I Was Sick, Mom.'  
  
"Heh...your inside-out vampires again," Amarant chuckled, smirking down at Freya, who crossed her arm and looked away huffily.  
  
"One wouldn't think," she began airily, "that, after everything we have seen, you would be so quick to dismiss such things."  
  
Zidane frowned.  
  
"Yeah, that's true, Amarant. I mean, is the idea of vampires really any more bizarre than the idea of dancing cacti going around, kicking our asses?"  
  
"Yours, maybe," the tall redhead shot back. "I can handle those spiky green Cactuar bastards just fine, myself."  
  
"Okay, granted, we could now, too, if we met them, but...what about the Grand Dragons that used Vivi for a hackey-sack that one time?"  
  
"Uh...what?" Amarant lifted an eyebrow, bemused.  
  
"Yeah; I don't remember that," Vivi piped up, forgetting his fear and letting go of Dagger's hand long enough to scratch his head, confused.  
  
"Whoa...when DID that happen?" Zidane wondered aloud.  
  
With a sigh, Steiner stepped forward, winding up to deliver a smack across the blonde's face.  
  
"Hey, hold on, Rusty! I'm not out of character this time!"  
  
"Out...of...character?" Steiner repeated, scratching his head in confusion.  
  
"Uh...okay, I'm gonna knock again," Zidane hastened to announce, moving quickly away from the knight.  
  
However, just as he made a move toward the knocker, the heavy wooden door creaked open slowly and ominously. The conversation came to a dead halt, the entire group falling silent as they gazed half-expectantly, half- terrified, at the figure in the doorway.  
  
"Yes, what is it?" the tall, wiry, pasty man asked dully, peering forebodingly at Zidane with an expression that clearly stated that he could have cared less, and wanted nothing more than for these unexpected visitors to go away.  
  
Zidane being Zidane, however, did not take the hint.  
  
"Yeah, hi. Uh, we're looking for a guy. He owns a tavern over in the nearest town...that way," he finished, pointing in the direction that they had come from. "Or, at least, he DID own a tavern..."  
  
The doorman opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by a voice behind him.  
  
"Raff-Riff!" a smooth, cultured male voice called reproachfully. "If we have guests, you are to invite them in directly!"  
  
The man, Raff-Riff apparently, did nothing of the sort, but rather, stared at them, his expression hidden within wings of thick, wavy brown hair.  
  
"Oh, never mind," the voice huffed impatiently.  
  
The next moment, a gloved hand seemed to emerge from the gloom within the house to nudge Raff-Riff out of the way, and another man, taller than Raff- Riff, with an extraordinarily long white face and nearly white-blonde hair, clad in a very expensively made suit with long tails, and a long black cape, stepped forward.  
  
"Good evening, my friends," he greeted them. The smile, meant to be friendly, came across as wolfish, as an ample mouthful of sharp looking teeth was revealed, and the tone, meant to be warm seemed nearly mocking.  
  
"Uh, h-hey," Zidane replied with a weak smile, fighting the urge to snatch Vivi under one arm, Dagger under the other, shout to the rest of his team to run, and take off himself down the hill, not stopping until the hill, the mansion, and the weird weather phenomenon that made it cloudy and stormy ONLY over that one house, were all well out of sight. Of course, though, that would probably be rude, and if he were to do such a thing, he would certainly hear about it from Dagger. Not to mention Freya. Not to mention Steiner. Not to mention...no, Amarant would probably back him up. Ah! But what was this weird man saying now?  
  
"Would you like to come in?"  
  
Zidane froze. Certainly, that would be the most sensible course of action, if they ever wanted to find this inn-keeper's sister, who presumably lived here. And yet... He gazed warily at those teeth, and was about to decline, when...  
  
"Oh, yes! Thank-you, sir!" Dagger said with a grateful smile.  
  
"Excellent," the man commented, appearing quite delighted. "Right this way, if you will."  
  
With a shrug of his free shoulder, Amarant started after him, and as such, so did Freya. Steiner, with a little less indifference in his gait, followed them. Vivi clung to Dagger's hand, looking quite terrified.  
  
  
  
Once the group was safely inside, the tall caped man led them down a long, dark hallway, lined with draperies of red velvet, lit only by two torches, one hung on each wall. Then, when the little impromptu parade reached the end of the hallway, the man turned to one side and opened a high oak door and led the weary travellers inside.  
  
Then, taking a seat in a high-backed chair cushioned in the same red velvet that liberally decorated the walls, he indicated to the group to seat themselves on the long sofa opposite him and facing the door.  
  
Silently, exchanging uneasy glances amongst themselves, the group did so.  
  
"So," Zidane finally spoke up, fidgeting nervously, trying to find a position in which his tail was not compressed beyond belief, "uh...who are you?"  
  
As he caught Dagger's eye, he knew immediately that phrasing his question this way had been a mistake. He inwardly steeled himself for the lecture on politeness that he would doubtlessly receive later.  
  
The man, however, merely laughed, then folded his long white hands over his knee.  
  
"My name is Leander Wesley. And who might you all be?"  
  
"Zidane Tibal," Zidane announced. "And she's Gar-er, Dagger Tribal. The little guy's Vivi, the guy in the armour is Adelbert Steiner. The two handcuffed together are Amarant - the big guy - and Freya."  
  
Leander raised an eyebrow at the casual tone of the young man's voice as he indicated 'the two handcuffed together.'  
  
"Er...is there a story behind how that came to occur?"  
  
"Don't ask," Amarant and Freya snapped in unison, before promptly receiving the same 'don't be rude' glare from Dagger that Zidane had only a moment before.  
  
Zidane chuckled nervously.  
  
"Eheh...yeah, uh, actually, the reason we're hear is that we're-"  
  
"Stop right there," Leander commanded softly and eerily. "I know exactly why you're here. And I know what it is you seek. I will tell you only this: what you seek is somewhere in this castle. It is for you and you alone, however, to discover it."  
  
With that, before any of the startled folks opposite him could utter a word, he rose, swept his cape about him, and exited in one graceful, fluid motion.  
  
"Um..." Dagger began hesitantly when Leander had gone, "that was..."  
  
"Weird?" Zidane suggested, glancing hesitantly about him at the small library into which they had been escorted. Along one wall was a bookshelf extending from the floor up to the high ceiling. A ladder leaned up against the shelves, threatening to topple at any second. A fireplace across from the bookshelves cast flickering shadows over the whole scene.  
  
"I think weird about sums it up," Steiner agreed sadly.  
  
"So, should we try to find our way out of here?" the blond youth asked.  
  
"Why would we want to leave? The guy as good as said the innkeeper's sister is here," Amarant told him boredly.  
  
Zidane frowned.  
  
"Uh...what?"  
  
"He said that what we're looking for is here, but we'll have to find it," Amarant paraphrased impatiently.  
  
"You know, he could have simply been mad," Freya suggested  
  
"Or slightly miffed," Dagger added, before shrinking back against the cushions as everyone fixed her a confused glance. "Okay, forget I said that."  
  
Zidane blinked once or twice, then rose from the sofa.  
  
"Okay, you guys, I think Amarant might be right. We should at least give it a shot. Y'know, look around for a bit."  
  
"Zidane, the man is crazy," Steiner insisted. "His words are no indication that we have found who we're looking for!"  
  
"I think Steiner's right here, Zidane," Dagger informed him gently, standing and placing a hand on his arm.  
  
With a sigh, Zidane nodded in reluctant consent.  
  
"Yeah, you're probably right. Maybe we should get out of here before we find out that these people are, like, cannibals or something."  
  
"Alright!" Vivi chirped, exceedingly relieved that they were going to be leaving this creepy place.  
  
Gradually, the rest of the group climbed to their feet and left the room.  
  
As they entered the front room and opened the door of the castle, however, the tall, lanky brown-haired man, Raff-Riff approached.  
  
"Where are you going?" he asked dully.  
  
"Oh, well, I don't think we're in the right place," Zidane hastened to explain, "so we thought we'd just take off."  
  
"We don't want to be an inconvenience, after all," Dagger added, nervously twisting a strand of hair.  
  
"No inconvenience," Raff-Riff assured them unconvincingly. "You can't go anywhere in this rain, either way."  
  
"But...it isn't raining," Freya noted, peering out the open door.  
  
Raff-Riff frowned at this, and then made a quick hand signal. As if on cue - strange how these things work out - a crack of thunder echoed overhead, and a torrent of rain began to pour down from the mass of heavy grey clouds.  
  
"Heh-heh-heh...well, don't that beat all..." Zidane laughed nervously, edging away from Raff-Riff and closer to the door, dragging Dagger with him.  
  
"Yes, doesn't it," Raff-Riff agreed, for the first time cracking a ghost of a smile.  
  
It seemed as though the lightning was in place, for that day at any rate, for the sole purpose of making Raff-Riff appear intimidating to lost, weary travelers, for the second he smiled, another deafening boom of thunder...er, boomed overhead.  
  
"Raff-Riff!" a reproachful voice called from behind the wiry man. "Are you frightening my guests away again?! Really, my friends, don't pay any attention to him. He was raised by Tonberries, you know."  
  
"O-oh," Dagger and Freya chorused lamely. "How tragic."  
  
Leander stepped from the shadows, a mournful expression making his long, white face seem even longer and whiter.  
  
"Yes, isn't it?" he sighed. "He is a good butler, though, if not a good doorman, and so I am reluctant to give him up."  
  
"You're too kind, master," Raff-Riff put in tonelessly.  
  
"But enough of that," Leander hurried on, ignoring the doorman. "You obviously cannot travel in that sort of weather, and so you shall be my guests for the night. Oh, no, I insist," he said, holding up a hand to silence the protest that Steiner seemed on the verge of offering. "And while you're here, you have a chance to...search for that thing that you're looking for."  
  
"Do you think the innkeeper's sister would take kindly to being referred to as a 'thing?'" Freya murmured to Amarant, who was still gazing longingly at the door. If he had learned one thing by now, it was that nothing good could possibly come of a situation so clearly begging for something ridiculous to happen.  
  
"I don't think he's talking about the innkeeper's sister," the redhead muttered, turning reluctantly away from the door.  
  
"So, it's settled, then?" Leander asked, glancing about the circle.  
  
Reluctantly, Zidane nodded.  
  
"Uh...thanks, man."  
  
"You may thank me by dining with me this evening. The meal will be ready at 7:00. Raff-Riff will show you at that time where the dining room is," the caped man informed everyone. "Well! I have business to attend to, and so I shall take my leave."  
  
With that, he turned and started down one of the other two hallways branching off from the main room.  
  
"Fell free to explore until I come for you," Raff-Riff said, scowling at the party one last time before following Leander down the hallway. "I shall see you within the hour."  
  
"I-I wonder how he'll find us if we're wandering around," Vivi mused, putting a hand to his chin...or what was presumably his chin.  
  
"Personally, Master Vivi, I would be just as glad if he should not be able to," Steiner said, his armour jangling together as he trembled ever so slightly with nervousness.  
  
Zidane smiled wanly at the tall knight.  
  
"Me, too, Steiner, believe me."  
  
"There's something not altogether right about that guy," Dagger noted suspiciously.  
  
Amarant rolled his eyes.  
  
"Great. Now that we've had the obvious stated so well, can we get started?"  
  
"Doing WHAT?" Zidane demanded.  
  
"Looking for that innkeeper's sister," Amarant replied.  
  
"I thought we weren't doing that," the blond said, scratching his head.  
  
"Well, we have to do something while we're stuck here," Dagger reminded him.  
  
"Yeah, I guess you're right. Okay, how about this: we'll split up."  
  
At Zidane's words, Dagger suppressed a groan of annoyance.  
  
'Oh, dear,' Freya thought. 'Heaven save that poor boy from the wrath of an angry woman if he should suggest splitting Amarant and me up again...'  
  
"Perhaps, Zidane," Steiner spoke up, whether having caught onto Freya's thought, or just reluctant to be placed in a smaller group, "it might be wiser if we all stayed together. After all, we don't know what might happen..."  
  
"Oh, c'mon, Steiner! What's the worst that could happen?" Zidane demanded, thus bringing down more of that good ol' death and destruction upon the heads of himself and his friends.  
  
"Zidane's right," Amarant said, cutting off Steiner's reply of what exactly could happen. "It's an old house. Yeah, it's got some crazy people, but there's nothing we can't handle. And splitting up's the best way to cover more ground."  
  
By the time he was finished, the rest of the group was staring at him strangely.  
  
"U-um, Amarant," Vivi piped up, "when did you start talking so much?"  
  
A moment of silence. Then...  
  
"Shut up!" Amarant whined most uncharacteristically before glaring up at the ceiling. "I would NOT say that, Rhianwen!"  
  
"Sorry," a voice called back.  
  
"Enough of this silliness!" Steiner said severely. "Now, let us organize into these groups if we must, and start exploring."  
  
Zidane nodded in satisfaction.  
  
"Great. Now, how about this: Steiner, Dagger, and Vivi, you three go down the middle hallway, and Amarant, Freya, and I will take the right."  
  
"It sounds good enough," Dagger agreed dubiously.  
  
"Well. I suppose we'll see you three at seven," Freya called to them as she was dragged toward the hallway off to the right.  
  
"Y-yeah," Vivi called back nervously as Dagger led him toward the center hallway. "See you later."  
  
  
  
"Steiner, what door did we come in through?" Dagger asked nervously twenty minutes later, staring in bewilderment through the door that she held open, a door that should ideally have led them out of the grandly decorated sitting room that they were currently in, and back into the hallway.  
  
"The one that you have just opened, Your Highness," the knight replied absently, intently studying a portrait hung above the massive stone fireplace. What fine attention to detail! What incredible melding of colours! Truly, he could feel the pain of the artist. It was like a window into the very soul of the tortured man!  
  
Glancing over her shoulder, curious as to what could possibly be capturing Steiner's attention so, Dagger shook her head in despair at the sight of the man gazing, utterly transfixed at a simple canvas, painted black, with a single red square drawn in its centre. Well. So it seemed that Leander was a collector of modern art.  
  
"Steiner!" she barked.  
  
"Wha? Oh, yes, Your Highness?"  
  
"It'll be YOUR highness if you don't stop calling me that," Dagger would have said, had it not been utterly out of character, as well as a direct plagiarism of a certain very silly cartoon show. As it was both, however, she simply sighed and beckoned him over.  
  
Frowning, he clanked across the room, nearly taking out a solid oak coffee table on his way, and joined her at the door. He glanced out the door as she had indicated, and looked away, all ready and set to tell her that yes, this was the door they had come in, and that he didn't exactly see the problem. However, as he opened his mouth to say all this, something occurred to him, and his gaze darted back out the open door.  
  
Gone was the dark, shadowy hallway. Gone were all its portraits of various family members of Leander. Gone were the velvet tapestries that hung the walls on either side. Gone were the torches. In short, gone was everything that might have led them out of this room.  
  
In its place was what appeared to be a beautiful orchard with many and varying fruit trees, all in full bloom. The earth was carpeted with thick, soft grass of a vivid emerald green. The sun filtered through the branches of the trees. Overhead, robins warbled and chirped blithely to one another.  
  
A delightful scene, certainly. But it is equally certain that neither Steiner nor Dagger found it particularly delightful.  
  
"Er..." Steiner stuttered lamely.  
  
"Quite," Dagger agreed dryly. "Steiner, where is the hallway?"  
  
"Er..." Steiner repeated.  
  
"Yes, I heard you the first time."  
  
"U-um...what's wrong?" Vivi inquired from a wing chair, looking up briefly from his Oxford's Big Book of Fairy Stories.  
  
The boy had been quite delighted to find the volume, having seen it at Kuja's desert palace, but not having had time to read beyond the first story. The first tale had delighted the little fellow, and he had been anxious to read more. Now, however, it seemed that there were more important matters than books.  
  
Dagger turned from the door and asked what seemed to Steiner, and would doubtlessly seem to my readers, an exceedingly silly question. One must remember, though, that when one is under great stress, one's mental faculties may crumble slightly.  
  
"Vivi, do you remember any of this?"  
  
"U-um...no," Vivi admitted, gazing into the badly placed orchard bewilderedly. "Dagger, where's the hallway?"  
  
"Well, Vivi, we...don't exactly know," Dagger informed the boy sadly. "We're trying to figure that out."  
  
"Perhaps, my queen, we should go explore the orchard to get to the bottom of this?" Steiner suggested, glaring at an unoffending bunny that had chanced to bounce into his line of vision. With a nervous bunny-noise, the bunny bounced away, followed closely by a young cat-eared girl somewhat resembling the author.  
  
"BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY BUNNY!" she shrieked.  
  
Vivi, Dagger, and Steiner watched her pass, blinking several times as they did so.  
  
"Er, that worries me a little," Dagger admitted, "but I don't think we have a choice. I just hope that the others are having an easier time than we are..."  
  
  
  
  
  
Now, it is a well known fact that to voice one's hopes for one's comrades in such a reckless fashion as Dagger has here is to condemn them to certain death, destruction, chaos, or at the very least, silliness. This case has been no exception. Tune in for the next instalment of 'Of Handcuffs and Singing Cats and True, True Love' to see this principle illustrated in a rather horrific manner...if my characters don't go on strike before then.  
  
  
  
  
  
End Notes: I'm afraid they ain't leaving this mansion for a while. Everything took a lot longer in this chapter than it was supposed to. Anyway, thank-you to everyone who read, and I hope you're still enjoying it. ^_^ 


	11. Poppies! Poppies! Poppies! The Tour Cont...

Chapter 11  
  
  
  
  
  
"Er, Zidane," Freya began slowly, frowning out the door that she held open.  
  
"Yeah, Freya?" Zidane called back absently, his attention completely absorbed with the ogling of a marble statue of naked woman.  
  
"Should there be an endless drop into a starry sky directly out this door?"  
  
"No, we came in through a hallway, remember?" Zidane replied, still fascinated by the statue. Dear lord, those were NOT normal dimensions! Who was the artist using as a model - Tifa Lockhart? Hold on...who was Tifa Lockhart? And how on earth did he know her name? And her dimensions?  
  
'I miss Dagger and her dimensions...why the heck do we keep going in different groups, anyway?'  
  
With a long-suffering sigh, Freya looked up at Amarant. Hiding a grin at her expression of utter desolation, he looked down at her, raising an eyebrow slightly.  
  
"Do you want the honors?" she asked.  
  
"No, you've earned it," he replied.  
  
"Wonderful. Let's go."  
  
With that, the two started across the room toward the blond thief. Once they were directly behind him, Freya grabbed hold of his ponytail and yanked.  
  
"Aiee!" Zidane yelped as the sensation of a thousand fiery needles jabbing into his skull shot through him.  
  
"Serves you right," his long-time friend informed him ruthlessly, dragging him away from the statue, across the room, still by the ponytail, to the door. "Now, would you look and tell me what in the hell happened to the hallway?"  
  
Zidane looked out the door accordingly, then blinked several times, and then peered more closely at the deep, fathomless blackness of space, dotted with stars.  
  
"Um...that's kinda weird..." he commented lamely.  
  
"Give the kid a trophy," Amarant muttered, leaning back against the wall.  
  
Zidane glared briefly at the redhead, then, giving his head a shake, he slammed the door shut.  
  
"What, are you hoping it'll be gone when you open the door again?" Freya inquired sarcastically.  
  
"Hey, just bear with me," Zidane requested. "I think I read a book about this once."  
  
Turning the knob, he yanked the door open again, and scratched his head in confusion as a beautiful, lush orchard, thickly carpeted with grass of purest emerald green, dotted with trees bearing all varieties of fruit in a dazzling array of colours, was revealed to his startled eyes.  
  
"Now, I KNOW that wasn't there a second ago," he announced.  
  
"Give the kid TWO trophies," Amarant muttered.  
  
"Oh, be quiet!" Freya commanded severely, swatting him.  
  
"Well," Zidane spoke up, "are we gonna go we explore?"  
  
"An orchard that just as good as came out of nowhere?" the Burmecian said incredulously. "Are you out of your mind, Zidane?"  
  
"Hey, it's better than trying to explore what was there a minute ago," the youth pouted.  
  
Freya began to say something, then stopped.  
  
"That's a good point."  
  
"Great! So, let's go! I wanna see if I can find a flower to bring back for Dagger," Zidane grinned.  
  
"Oh, what a sweet gesture! I'm sure she'll appreciate it," Freya commented, her more feminine side clasping its - well, her hands and going all shiny- eyed.  
  
"Yeah, am I sweet or what?" Zidane asked rhetorically.  
  
"Or what," Amarant replied predictably.  
  
"Hey, Amarant," the blond began with a knowing grin, elbowing the older man. "I'll bet Freya wishes SOMEONE would give HER a flower."  
  
Both Amarant and Freya stared at Zidane as though he had sprouted another head.  
  
"What are you on about?" Freya finally asked.  
  
"Never mind," Zidane hastened to assure her, now feeling rather silly.  
  
With that, he turned and started through the door into the exceedingly oddly placed orchard.  
  
"So..." Amarant began slowly as they started after him, "is the kid right?"  
  
"Erm...pardon?"  
  
"Do you wish that someone would give you a flower?"  
  
Freya shook her head.  
  
"Not especially, no."  
  
"Right," Amarant said, hastily tossing the little wildflower to the side.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Er, my queen, what are you doing?" a sweatdropping Steiner inquired hesitantly.  
  
Dagger glanced down from her perch high on the bough of a flowering plum tree.  
  
"I'm picking a bouquet of flowers for Zidane!" she replied, much as though there could have been no question about it.  
  
"Do...do you think he will appreciate your efforts?"  
  
"Why wouldn't he?"  
  
"D-don't people normally give flowers to girls?" Vivi asked, scratching his large yellow hat, as his head was rather difficult to get to at that moment.  
  
"Well, I certainly don't understand why!" Dagger declared, reaching for a particularly fragrant blossom to add to her collection.  
  
"I suppose it IS rather sweet, if slightly strange," Steiner commented to Vivi.  
  
Vivi nodded.  
  
"I-I don't know whether it would be worse if Zidane didn't like them, or if he did."  
  
"If Zidane didn't like what?" a familiar voice inquired roguishly from behind them.  
  
The knight and the little mage simultaneously whirled about to behold the betailed youth grinning at them, hands behind his back.  
  
"What have you got there, Zidane?" Vivi asked, noticing the position of his hands more than anyone else as he was nearly at their eye level.  
  
"Oh, just a little something for Dagger," Zidane replied with a wink.  
  
Steiner frowned.  
  
"And where are Amarant and Freya?"  
  
Zidane blinked.  
  
"Um...they're not right behind me?"  
  
Steiner and Vivi shook their heads.  
  
"Uh-oh..." Zidane sighed, slumping forward in dismay. Then, catching sight of a familiar young lady, he completely and utterly forgot about his mysteriously lost companions. "Dagger!"  
  
"Oh! Zidane!" Dagger called back, sliding down from the tree and hastening to hide the small bouquet of plum blossoms behind her back.  
  
Once on the ground, the young couple ran toward one another, each carefully concealing their lovely gifts of flowers.  
  
"I have something for you!" they said in unison. "I hope...you'll...like...it..."  
  
This last sentence trailed off into bewilderment on both their parts, as the gaze of each lit on a gift identical to the one that they were presenting.  
  
"Oh...thank-you, Zidane," Dagger smiled lamely, accepting the single lily that he held out to her.  
  
"You're-you're welcome. And...uh...thanks," he repeated, accepting the bouquet of plum blossoms.  
  
"So..." Dagger began.  
  
"So..." Zidane agreed.  
  
"Er...should someone go look for Amarant and Freya?" Dagger asked.  
  
"Yeah..." Zidane admitted reluctantly. Then, as a thought occurred to him, he brightened. "I know! Steiner and Vivi can do it!"  
  
"Oh, thank-you, Zidane," the knight huffed. "Why can we not all go together to look for them?"  
  
"Well...someone should, y'know, keep exploring..."  
  
"W-we could explore on the way," Vivi pointed out.  
  
Zidane glared at the large yellow hat with its large yellow eyes, then gave a wan smile of apology.  
  
"Yeah, I guess that's true," he admitted.  
  
"But," Dagger broke in, "we'll have more chance of finding Amarant and Freya before they can stumble into some sort of dangerous situation if we go in two groups."  
  
"Exactly!" Zidane hastened to say.  
  
Steiner looked extremely sceptical, and Vivi glanced about between the three in confusion.  
  
"So, good luck, you two," Dagger said to the knight and the mage before turning and skipping down the orchard path.  
  
"Yeah, see you," Zidane mumbled absently, staring in fascination at the incredibly nice backside of his girlfriend, clad in those orange spandex. 'Oh, yeah...'  
  
"Take care not to slip in that puddle of your own drool and knock yourself unconscious on the ground," Steiner muttered, leading Vivi back the way they had come, hoping that he'd be able to find the door. Really, wandering around a beautifully sunny orchard in a heavy suit of armour was turning out to be a bad idea. He mopped his forehead miserably, and glared up at the sun beating down upon them.  
  
"Steiner!" Vivi exclaimed. "A door!"  
  
"Wonderful! Good eyes, Master Vivi!"  
  
"Thanks," the tiny mage smiled up at him.  
  
And with that, the two opened the door and stepped through into perils beyond their imagination...  
  
  
  
"Damn," Amarant sighed as a fifth try at opening and closing the door once again failed to yield the sunny orchard that currently held the rest of the group.  
  
"Tell me again, Amarant," Freya requested tiredly. "Why did we come back here?"  
  
"We got separated from everyone else," he said. "You follow?"  
  
"Yes, that much is clear."  
  
"When we ended up here, I thought we'd be able to retrace our steps and find everyone else."  
  
"Ah," she nodded.  
  
Amarant glared down at her.  
  
"Plan struck a snag when you decided to close the door behind us."  
  
"I told you already, I didn't touch the door!"  
  
"Then who did?"  
  
"Perhaps it was the little fairies who live in the garden?"  
  
"Or 'perhaps' it was one of your inside-out upside-down vampires."  
  
"Will you forget about the vampires?!" she exclaimed, exasperated.  
  
"A little hard to do, when you won't quit talking about them."  
  
"I give you my word that I won't say another thing about them, if you don't."  
  
"Deal."  
  
"Wonderful. Now, try the door again."  
  
"Fine," he grumbled, swinging the door open again.  
  
This time, the pair found themselves staring out onto a field of poppies...poppies...poppies...poppies...  
  
Oh, goodness! I'm sorry! I forgot where I was for a second.  
  
"Er, I think we try again," Freya announced slowly. "I have a very bad feeling about that field."  
  
"The field of harmless little red flowers?" Amarant snorted. "You're crazy."  
  
He had just started over the threshold of the grandly decorated parlour and into the field, when a voice rang out through the air.  
  
"I'll get you, my pretty," it screeched, "and you're little rat, too!"  
  
The next instant, a woman garbed in a long black cloak and a pointy black hat, her face turned a bright shade of green with the aid of that wonderful invention, make-up, zipped past on a Hoover vacuum cleaner, then doubled back and headed straight for them.  
  
"Maybe you're right," Amarant admitted, yanking the door shut just before the woman on the vacuum could reach them. "We should stay in here."  
  
"Your little rat?" Freya echoed rather belatedly. "Oh, no. I'm going to find her and make her take that back."  
  
"Well, you are," he pointed out, biting back a smile.  
  
"I am what? Your little rat?"  
  
"Well, A little rat..." he muttered, flushing slightly.  
  
"Oh...right," she agreed, flushing slightly more.  
  
"Uh...the door again?"  
  
"Might as well," she sighed.  
  
This time, the door swung open to reveal a long, barely lit staircase spiralling into depths unknown.  
  
"Finally, we're getting somewhere," Amarant noted in satisfaction.  
  
"Right. A long, winding staircase is much better than an orchard," Freya sighed.  
  
"If you can think of a good way to get back to the orchard, I'd love to hear it," he growled, starting over the threshold.  
  
"Why do I get the feeling that we'll both regret this?" Freya murmured as she followed close behind him.  
  
  
  
  
  
"U-um...Steiner?" Vivi choked out, staring in utter horror at something just beyond Steiner's left shoulder.  
  
"Yes, Master Vivi?" Steiner replied, staring in the same horror.  
  
"Is a gigantic dragon, frothing at the mouth, and about to devour us a bad thing?"  
  
"I should say so..."  
  
"Back through the door?"  
  
"A good idea, Master Vivi."  
  
With that, they both turned on their heels and bolted through the door, slamming it tightly behind them.  
  
"That was close," Vivi panted, leaning heavily against the cool, polished wood of the door.  
  
"Master Vivi!" Steiner hissed, taking the little mage's gloved hand in his.  
  
"Y-yeah, Steiner?"  
  
"Look!"  
  
Vivi looked accordingly, and as he did, his expression registered such an expression of horror as had never been seen before.  
  
As one, Vivi and Steiner bolted back through the door, deciding mutually without needing to exchange a single word, that they would much rather face a massive, slavering dragon, armed with toothpicks, than face the horrors that had greeted them on the other side of that door.  
  
  
  
As the door slammed shut, Billy-Mime turned to Susie-Mime, both unheeding of the quiet, peaceful, yet bustling sunshine-filled Paris street behind them.  
  
'Why do you think they ran away, screaming?' he motioned through the use of various and sundry frightening displays of body contortionism before promptly becoming trapped in an invisible box.  
  
'No idea,' Susie-Mime shrugged, reapplying a fresh coat of white paint to her face and making sure that her black leotard was on straight over her head.  
  
  
  
"So, Dagger," Zidane began, glancing shyly at the lovely brunette at his side, "how are...things?"  
  
"Things are...good. Things are pretty good," Dagger replied, returning his shy glances with equally shy glances of her own, and hurriedly looking away, a faint stain of colour creeping into her cheeks, as Zidane caught her eye. "How are...things with you?"  
  
"Good, good. I hope we can find that innkeeper's sister soon," he sighed, shaking his head.  
  
"Y-yes, so do I," Dagger agreed. "Er, Zidane, did you really like your bouquet, or were you just pretending?"  
  
"Oh, no, no, I loved it!" he hastened to assure her. "See? Watch: I'll wear one of the flowers in my hair for the rest of the day!"  
  
"Well, you don't have to do THAT," she giggled.  
  
But, alas, it was too late. Zidane had already tugged a plum blossom from the bouquet, and was in the process of tucking it behind his ear.  
  
"Would you like me to make you a wreath?" Dagger inquired dryly, quite taken aback when Zidane nodded enthusiastically.  
  
"And I can make one for you!" he added excitedly.  
  
"Of course," she agreed slowly, a small smile spreading across her face as she reflected that, after all, it might not be so bad. He might look awfully cute with a wreath of pretty flowers...  
  
  
  
  
  
End Notes: Hee! The flower thing was for all you Zidane/Dagger people. They're so much fun to write! I can do all the little cutesy things with them that my other favourite pairings don't seem to lend themselves to. Too bad I do the cutesy things with all of them anyway...  
  
Oh, and I must apologize for the story seeming to have gotten completely off track as of late. I assure you, though, that I fully intend to get on with the plot before the end of the next chapter. And a longer chapter, at that. 


	12. Flying Polka Dotted WeaselBunnies and Ot...

Chapter 12 - Flying Polka Dotted Weasel Bunnies and Other New Friends  
  
  
  
Author's Notes: Hee! I think this is finally getting back on track. I'm rather proud of this chapter, and no, it isn't JUST because of the vaguely 'shippy moments between Amarant and Freya! It has something to do with the weasel bunnies alluded to in the title. ^_^  
  
  
  
  
  
"When do you expect us to reach the bottom of this staircase?" Freya asked, the question echoing off of stone walls, steps, and ceiling, as they rounded another corner in the narrow, pitch-dark stairwell.  
  
"Any time now," Amarant replied tersely. Then he chuckled slightly.  
  
"What?" she demanded.  
  
"I was just thinking, it's the first time since all this shit began that I'm glad for these damn handcuffs."  
  
She blinked, honestly bewildered, nearly missing a step in her bewilderment and stumbling slightly.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I know we didn't get separated."  
  
"That is a positive aspect, I suppose," she admitted guardedly.  
  
"What, you'd rather be lost in here by yourself?"  
  
"No," she replied emphatically. "I definitely wouldn't."  
  
"Good."  
  
A silence hung between them, broken moments later.  
  
"Can you see a thing in here?" Freya asked, peering into the darkness.  
  
"Yeah," he replied.  
  
"Really? What?"  
  
"A whole lot of darkness."  
  
"Not funny."  
  
"Don't blame me; blame Rhianwen. She's the one writing this crappy dialogue."  
  
"Amarant! Fourth wall!"  
  
"Right, right," he sighed. "Sorry. Ow! Dammit!"  
  
These last two exclamations were brought about as Amarant learned in a very painful way that involved squishing his nose flat on a hard, cold, and very stone stone wall, that he would not be able to progress any farther forward.  
  
"Ow!" Freya echoed as she walked headlong into him, not prepared for the stop. "Sorry."  
  
"Don't mention it," he tossed over his shoulder as he ran his free hand over the wall, searching for a door, a window, or a latch of any sort.  
  
Several minutes of unsuccessful searching later, he sighed.  
  
"Sorry to have to tell you this, rat, but we've gotta turn around. Can't go any farther down here."  
  
"We...can't," she repeated slowly.  
  
"Nope."  
  
"Just wonderful!" she exclaimed, throwing her free hand up in exasperation and moving to lean against the stone wall, that same free arm crossed.  
  
Smirking in satisfaction that she very nearly had the gesture mastered by now, he mimicked her.  
  
However, the instant his back touched the wall, something happened. Something mysterious. Something unexplained. Something...completely unrelated in any way.  
  
  
  
The day had been a very cold and snowy one way up in the northwester most continent of the planet of Gaia. The lost one, this author believes. This was nothing new, as the weather up there tended to be always excessively cold and snowy, with frequent blizzards. A trapper named Cedric Kaughnee, a fellow well known about those parts for his extraordinarily bad luck, had set out that day in the hopes of actually catching something.  
  
"For once in my whole bloody miserable life," he muttered to himself as he trudged along through snow knee-deep in areas where the snow had been the lightest. "Is just a tiny bit of luck so much to ask?"  
  
Repeating this mantra to himself over and over, Cedric set his traps, and found an excellent place to wait completely out of sight, foolishly chosen right next to the side of a snow-covered mountain.  
  
"Ah, well, the day is calm," he reflected with a nod of satisfaction. "No way an avalanche will happen."  
  
And so there he crouched for many a long hour, watching his traps with a keen eye and cat-like reflexes, ready to leap the second the traps were set off.  
  
As the day wore on, though, Cedric began to get a little discouraged, and finally gave up entirely.  
  
Just as he pushed himself by his crouch against the side of the mountain, however, in the basement of a spooky mansion far, far away, a tall, muscular redheaded bounty hunter and a Burmecian dragoon garbed in a scarlet hat and coat leaned against a stone wall, and as though on cue, a faint rumble started above our unfortunate trapper.  
  
"Oh, bugger," Cedric sighed, glancing up and rolling his eyes at the sight of a massive pile of snow descending rapidly upon him.  
  
And thus followed a scene of extreme violence and refrigeration.  
  
When the dust finally settled, or the fine, powdery snow settled, as it were, a little white bunny bounced merrily across the top of the newly formed snow pile. It stopped and gazed in confusion, its little bunny-head tilted to the side, at a fur hat with a long racoon tail, the only testament that there had ever existed such a person as Cedric Kaughnee, the unfortunate trapper.  
  
  
  
  
  
Oh, yes; and as Amarant and Freya leaned against the brick wall, it also spun about at a dizzying rate to deposit them into a hallway, lit dimly by a number of flickering torches mounted on the stone walls.  
  
"Damn trapdoors," Amarant muttered, climbing to his feet and dragging Freya up after him.  
  
"Look on the bright side," she suggested, wincing as her arm was nearly torn from its socket. "At least we found a way through the wall."  
  
He turned to glare at her, the effect much less intimidating than he probably imagined with the play of light and shadow over his features from the torchlight.  
  
"Shut up."  
  
"So you keep saying," she muttered tiredly, crossing her arm. "Well, then let's get moving. We don't have time to stand here and wait for a way back to the others to show itself."  
  
And with that, Amarant found himself dragged down the stony hallway by someone little more than half his size, and wondering, very befuddled, why exactly he felt a slight pang of guilt at having requested her silence on less than polite terms, as well as why exactly she seemed to mind at all.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Raff-Riff," Leander began in a very affected calm, stately fashion from the head of his massive cherry oak dining room table, "do be so good as to search for our guests. They seem to have gotten themselves quite lost. I am afraid this house has that effect..."  
  
With a silent nod and an equally silent glower, Raff-Riff turned and started out of the dining room.  
  
"I do hope," the thin, almost ghostly-pale Lord Wesley murmured to himself, "that they haven't wandered down to the basement. I don't believe we have quite managed to rid it of all the weasel-bunnies..."  
  
  
  
  
  
"Hey."  
  
Freya stopped, but didn't turn around.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Something wrong?"  
  
"No," she replied quickly and utterly unconvincingly.  
  
"That's a lie."  
  
"What do you mean? Of course it isn't. I'm having the time of my life spending every waking - and sleeping - second with a man with an extremely large chip on his shoulder, against both our wills, and having him continuously waver between being relatively civil and utterly impossible. I absolutely adore having no idea which mental state he's in now, and whether or not it's safe to talk to him. And mostly, I love having him take the entire situation out on me when it's the latter."  
  
"What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded. "I know this isn't your fault."  
  
"Yes, well, one would never know it, with the way you've been telling me to shut up nearly every time I try to talk to you for the past two days."  
  
He bit back an angry retort that rose immediately to his lips, and then stopped and frowned. Then, with a sigh, he began to speak, but stopped as a flurry of movement caught his eye, which narrowed...along with his other one, of course.  
  
She peered up at him questioningly.  
  
"There's something down here with us," he explained, gesturing slightly to the left.  
  
"Yes, I know," she informed him with a shrug.  
  
He gazed at her incredulously.  
  
"Then why didn't you tell me?"  
  
"Well, they haven't bothered us yet, so why go looking for trouble?"  
  
"So they don't ambush us when we least expect it?" he suggested, throwing up his hand in exasperation.  
  
She arched an eyebrow.  
  
"That sounds like an excuse made up by someone who's looking for a fight."  
  
"Oh, shut up!"  
  
"Fine," she bit out before turning and storming off in the other direction...or trying to, at any rate. As one might expect by this point, since there was no cooperation from Amarant, who instead watched her with an amused smirk, the chain of the handcuffs quickly pulled taut, and Freya found herself quite unable to go any further.  
  
"Damnit," she muttered, starting back, carefully keeping any trace of embarrassment from her expression, although she was blushing slightly.  
  
"Bet you feel pretty stupid now," Amarant commented, chuckling.  
  
"Yes, I think someone's beginning to rub off on me," she returned pointedly.  
  
"Shu-"  
  
"If you finish that, I'll shove this-" She brandished her spear. "-so far up your nose, it comes out the top of your head."  
  
"Fine," he sighed. "Can we get moving?"  
  
When she didn't reply, he glanced down to see if she was possibly giving him the silent treatment. Instead, her gaze was fixed on something beyond his shoulder.  
  
"Uh, Freya? What is it?"  
  
"Amarant," she began quietly, "do you remember those creatures that we didn't go after because they weren't bothering us at all?"  
  
His eyes narrowed and he nodded hesitantly.  
  
"Yeah..."  
  
"Well, I think they're ready to bother us."  
  
He glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, there, huddled against the wall of hard, grey stone, were several strange-looking little creatures with large, floppy ears, glassy little black eyes, soft, fluffy tails, sharp, vicious-looking teeth, and hides sprinkled liberally with large blue polka- dots.  
  
Combined with the dim, flickering light of the torches, these little menaces made for an altogether uncanny picture, particularly when Amarant noticed that the glassy little eyes were fixed on him and Freya, and filled with an expression of malice and mischief.  
  
"What the hell are they?" he demanded of no one in particular.  
  
"They look like some sort of diseased cross between weasels and rabbits, don't they?" Freya replied, shaking her head in bafflement.  
  
He smirked.  
  
"Yeah. Whatever they are, let's get rid of 'em and get the hell out of this hallway."  
  
"Oh, this won't go well," she murmured forebodingly, reaching for her weapon.  
  
  
  
  
  
Five minutes later, the two warriors gazed about them at all the little pieces of rabid polka-dotted weasel-bunny lying on the surrounding floor.  
  
"You were saying?" Amarant chuckled.  
  
"I stand corrected," Freya admitted, pleasantly surprised. "Well! On with our adventure. There seems to be a room at the end of the hallway. Shall we go investigate?"  
  
"Right," he agreed, shaking another of the strange little creatures off of his arm, where it was hanging by its teeth, and following her down the hall.  
  
  
  
  
  
Darkness...  
  
What time was it?  
  
More darkness...  
  
For that matter, what day was it?  
  
Still more darkness...  
  
Hell, forget days; what YEAR was it?  
  
To age-ambiguous Vincent Valentine, it seemed as though he had been lying in this dusty, musty, cramped coffin for an eternity. At least, if the decided crick in his neck, the aches of disuse shooting through his shoulders and back, and the desperate need to relieve himself, were any indication.  
  
"I certainly hope that young blond fellow I was supposed to meet up with decides to show his face soon. I need a cup of coffee. Badly. And a toothbrush. I KNEW that drinking a glass of warm milk before going to sleep was a bad idea. But no, Hojo told me it would make me nice and relaxed and drowsy for my eternal slumber. Idiot," Vincent finished in a resentful mutter, staring moodily up at the inside of the lid of his coffin, his home for the past thirty years, had he but been aware of it at the time. Then he sighed. "I do wonder what woke me up, though."  
  
A loud thump interrupted the train of his thoughts.  
  
"Ah," he said. "That would be it. I wonder what that was. Likely another weasel-bunny tripping over something."  
  
Another thump reached his ears, this time followed by a bellowed string of profanity.  
  
"Amarant!" a second voice admonished.  
  
"What?" the first voice growled.  
  
"Just because you were foolish enough to stub your toe on that old coffin doesn't mean you have to scream dirty language at the sky."  
  
"Can't see the damn sky from inside this fucking fun-house, can we?"  
  
"You know full well what I meant," the second voice, obviously female, shot back icily.  
  
Vincent sighed. This penance deal was difficult enough to accept without being woken up every few minutes by a rogue weasel-bunny, or a random wanderer.  
  
"Will you kindly take the lady's advice and be quiet?" he called to them, rapping gently on the roof of his coffin.  
  
Two startled yelps echoed through the room outside of the coffin.  
  
"Is there someone in there?" the woman called softly.  
  
"Oh, wonderful," Vincent sighed. "Now I suppose they'll want to know all about the enigma that is Vincent Valentine. Maybe if I act like I'm dead, they'll go away."  
  
No such luck. A knock that nearly deafened him boomed through the small box.  
  
"Ouch!" he shouted without thinking about it.  
  
"Who the hell's in there?" the first voice he had heard demanded.  
  
"Er, no one. Now, if you aren't a young man with spiky blond hair, please leave quickly and quietly. I need to get back to sleep."  
  
"If there's no one in there, who said all that?" the woman demanded humorously.  
  
"A...figment of your overactive imaginations?" Vincent tried lamely. "Heh- heh-heh...ugh."  
  
"We're opening this damn thing," the man informed him coolly. "Hope you're not naked in there."  
  
"..." Vincent said, finally slipping into character.  
  
Seconds later, the lid of his coffin was jerked away, and he lifted one arm hastily to shield his eyes, unaccustomed to any light, from the nearly overwhelming glow of the torches hanging about the small room.  
  
As the spots before them gradually faded, his vision righted itself, and he stared incredulously at the immensely tall, immensely muscular man with a thick tangle of red hair tumbling to his shoulders and effectively hiding his eyes from the world.  
  
'Strange...' he thought. However, his tact, as well as the fact that an in- character Vincent rarely said anything to his acquaintances, and said even less to strangers, prevented him from voicing this comment.  
  
When, however, his gaze left the tall man and shifted to his companion, who seemed to be a human-sized white rat garbed in a red coat and hat, he couldn't quite resist commenting.  
  
"I knew there was a canine creature in the group I am to join, but I had no idea there was a giant rat..."  
  
"Er...group?" the rat-woman repeated. "I believe you must have the wrong people."  
  
"Yeah," the redhead agreed. "Already got all our damn party-members."  
  
"Er, alright," Vincent said slowly, climbing out of his coffin. "I had wondered, anyway, where the young blond man - Storm, or Rainbow, or Cloud, or something to do with rain, I think - was. Not to mention the cute little ninja girl I was told was travelling with him by this point," he added, smiling and nodding to himself as he recalled the picture he had been shown by the directors of a young Miss Yuffie Kisaragi. Then he frowned. "I have just one question, then. If you aren't involved in all of this, what are you doing in the Shinra mansion?"  
  
  
  
Amarant blinked.  
  
"The...Shinra mansion," he repeated.  
  
"Yes," the dark-haired red-caped man confirmed with a nod.  
  
'Er...is that what Leander Wesley calls his home?" Freya asked hesitantly.  
  
"Leander whom?" the pasty fellow asked, perplexed.  
  
"Leander Wesley," she repeated. "The man who owns this mansion."  
  
"No, this mansion is owned by the Shinra Corporation," the man insisted.  
  
Freya and Amarant exchanged glances.  
  
"Of course it is," Freya agreed soothingly. "I think you'd best tell us your name now."  
  
"...Vincent," he said. "Vincent Valentine."  
  
"Alright, Mr. Valentine. Now, I must admit that, although it is entirely possible that Amarant here and I have accidentally hopped to a different big scary mansion through the use of the dimensional portals apparently planted in the doorways, this is, as far as we know, Wesley Manor."  
  
Vincent blinked.  
  
"Could it be...? Could I...have the wrong address?"  
  
With that, he pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and studied it intently. Finally, he shook his head.  
  
"No, that's impossible. I suppose that blond boy and his group must simply be late. Well. If it isn't too much trouble, could you please leave so I can go back to sleep now?"  
  
Exchanging another glance, Amarant and Freya each shrugged their free shoulder, and as one, turned to leave the room.  
  
"We apologize for disturbing you, Mr. Valentine," Freya called over her shoulder as the lid of the coffin slammed shut.  
  
  
  
  
  
Vincent nearly smiled to himself as he heard the faint sound of a door closing. Had he gotten the wrong address! What an absurd idea!  
  
Then he frowned.  
  
"Were those two wearing...handcuffs?"  
  
  
  
  
  
Meanwhile, at an entirely different big, spooky mansion, a young man with a full mane of spiky blond hair gazed about a stone-encased room, repeatedly returning his attention to the coffin in the center, utterly perplexed.  
  
"Anything yet, Cloud?" a girl of sixteen with short dark hair asked with a weary sigh.  
  
He shook his head.  
  
"Not yet, Yuffie."  
  
"Dammit!" exclaimed a large, dark-skinned man with a gun mounted onto where his forearm had presumably once resided. "We got better things to be doin' than this!"  
  
"Look, Barret," Cloud began calmly, placing a hand on the taller man's shoulder, and then jerking it abruptly away as he read certain violence in the dark, angry eyes. "We KNOW we're supposed to be meeting a new party member here. He's in that coffin! We just haven't found the proper trigger to make him open the lid and engage in witty repartee with us yet."  
  
"He's obv'ously not here," Barret noted, bringing his fist down on the lid of the coffin. "We'd be betta ta give up an' try again later!"  
  
"But I want him to join NOW!" Yuffie insisted, the statement falling just short of a whine. "I saw his picture! He's really cute in a dark, moody, pasty kind of way."  
  
"An' that means what to me?" Barret demanded, crossing his arms. Or rather, his arm and his gun.  
  
"Not to you! To ME!" the teen exclaimed. "Without this guy, the only men around are you, Cloud, Red XIII, and Cid!"  
  
"We haven't met Cid yet," Cloud reminded her mildly.  
  
"Shut up!" she barked. "And go talk to the coffin again!"  
  
"Fine, fine," Cloud sighed, sidling over to the coffin and rapping softly on the lid once again.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
All of this is beside the point, although it does serve to illustrate the importance of double-checking the addresses of ones destinations.  
  
Back in the manor that actually concerns our tale, Amarant and Freya had quite given up on ever making that wall spin back around to let them into the long, winding, dark, cramped stairway again. This suited Freya quite well, as she wasn't terribly fond of long, winding, dark, cramped stairways. Amarant, however, was becoming rather annoyed with the weasel- bunnies continuously clamping their teeth onto his arm, and considered the staircase to be the lesser of two evils.  
  
He had assured Freya, with a dry smirk, that he would hold her hand on the way up, if she liked.  
  
Her response had been, predictably, to shake her head with a small smile and cheeks slightly redder than usual, and then to increase her efforts to make the wall spin back around.  
  
This, she assured Amarant when he asked later, was simply because she was becoming worried about the others. However, we all know better, and it is to be expected that Amarant does, too.  
  
At any rate, just as the situation was becoming hopeless, and Freya had turned from the wall to tell Amarant that they'd better find a new way out, the wall creaked into motion, and began to spin, knocking Freya forwards, and directly into Amarant.  
  
Not quite prepared for this, Amarant went down easily, with one disgruntled, but strangely happy Burmecian dragoon on landing on top of him.  
  
When the two managed to regain their senses enough to look at the wall to see if the doorway had indeed reappeared, they found themselves staring up at the expressionless eyes and thin white face of Raff-Riff the doorman.  
  
"Am I...interrupting something?" he asked tonelessly, but the slight quirk of his eyebrow spoke volumes.  
  
"You knocked her over when you came through the wall," Amarant growled, climbing to his feet and dragging Freya up after him.  
  
"Ah. Very good," Raff-Riff said dully.  
  
"Not for those of us knocked over with a stone wall," Freya muttered, pushing a strand of hair away from her nose.  
  
"I have come to escort you both to dinner," the doorman went on.  
  
"Er...you have? What of our friends?" Freya demanded.  
  
Amarant simply glared suspiciously at the man, who stared back with no expression whatsoever.  
  
"They are already in the Master's dining hall. Now, if you will follow me? The Master hates to be kept waiting by his guests."  
  
"I bet he does," Amarant muttered. "Anyone goes near my neck, I break theirs."  
  
"Be polite," Freya hissed at him, then frowned thoughtfully. "So, does this mean you're finally taking the threat of inside-out upside-down vampires seriously?"  
  
Silence hung between them as Raff-Riff re-opened the door to the staircase through some mysterious means. Finally...  
  
"Shut up!" Amarant requested. 


	13. On the Road Again

Chapter 13 - On the Road Again  
  
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-------------------------------  
  
Zidane drummed his fingers on the table absently, glancing once again at the door. He was currently in Leander's massive dining room, seated in a heavy, high-backed chair pulled right up to the gleaming mahogany table, easily as long as some streets Zidane had seen were wide. To his left Dagger fidgeted nervously, carefully avoiding looking at their host. The young man smirked knowingly. From the way her cheeks were glowing pink amid the curtain of dark hair falling over her face, she was recalling the...more than slightly compromising situation Raff-Riff had found them in earlier.  
  
------------------------------  
  
As it had turned out, taking that moment to relax and make daisy chains had been a better idea than either had anticipated, proving to be just the thing both needed to raise their recently flagging spirits.  
  
Unfortunately - if one chose to view it that way - the moment of relaxation was all that the two had needed to regain energy, and completely forget why they had been slightly miffed at one another. Dagger had slid a flower into Zidane's hair, Zidane had teasingly slid a flower into the neckline of Dagger's low-necked fluffy white blouse, his hand lingering a moment or twelve longer than was strictly necessary, Dagger had slid a hand into Zidane's hair while her other had meandered down his back to stroke his tail, which had intrigued her for rather a long time, and the two had gone from there.  
  
When Raff-Riff had happened past, he had found the two nice young people lying on the ground, or in Zidane's case, on top of Dagger, both enjoying themselves, and each other, hugely, although both had reflected that there were far too many clothes in the way.  
  
---------------------------------  
  
And thus was the source of Dagger's current embarrassment. Grinning a wicked grin, Zidane leaned over, with his mouth next to her ear.  
  
"Don't worry, Dagger; we can continue later where we had to leave off."  
  
"I should hope so!" she began to whisper back emphatically, then thought better of it and simply smiled seductively at him.  
  
"So," Leander spoke up suddenly from the head of the table, "your friends should arrive any minute now, hmm?"  
  
"Yeah, I hope so," Zidane sighed, suddenly feeling rather guilty at the knowledge that he hadn't spared his friends, possibly lost and in danger somewhere in this bizarre house, a thought since running into Dagger.  
  
Dagger, as well, looked rather sheepish.  
  
"Yes, I hope they haven't gotten into any trouble."  
  
"Not to worry," Leander laughed. "Raff-Riff will have kept them out of...ah...anything best not seen."  
  
"Now, THAT makes me worry," Zidane muttered to Dagger.  
  
"Me, too," she replied emphatically. "Especially with the talent Steiner has for getting into trouble."  
  
"Not to mention Vivi," Zidane added. "At least we know that Freya and Amarant probably didn't get into any really stupid situations."  
  
Dagger frowned.  
  
"We ARE talking about the two people who, in three days, managed to get themselves handcuffed together, get stuck on the floor between two beds, severely injure themselves in battle without coming in any contact with the enemy, and...get a strange-looking polka-dotted creature stuck to Amarant's arm," she finished slowly, eyes trained on the spectacle just across the table from them.  
  
Raff-Riff had just entered the room through its high polished wood double doors, and behind him had stalked a very annoyed Amarant with a rogue weasel-bunny still hanging off of his arm by the teeth. Attached to him was, of course, a very tired-looking Freya, who shot Dagger a weary, long- suffering smile. Dagger returned it sympathetically, suppressing a giggle at the firm shake Amarant gave his arm every couple of seconds, trying unsuccessfully to dislodge the tiny creature.  
  
"I hate everything," he grumbled as the two sat, by necessity, in chairs placed side-by-side.  
  
"Yes, you've mentioned," Freya sighed, grasping the little creature by the tail and yanking it off of his arm.  
  
"Ow!" he shrieked, thus earning a strange look from everyone in the nearby vicinity, and several who weren't, as the weasel-bunny, teeth still clamped tightly shut, took a sizeable chunk of his arm with it.  
  
"S-sorry," Freya murmured, choking back a laugh as she tossed the little polka-dotted creature over her shoulder.  
  
The next second, another pained shriek echoed out behind them, considerably higher in pitch.  
  
"Ow!"  
  
"Oh, no! I've hit Vivi!" Freya exclaimed, horrified.  
  
"N-no, you didn't," the voice of that same tiny mage informed her, quite confused.  
  
She frowned, turning around.  
  
"Well, then, who-"  
  
She stopped abruptly at the sight of Steiner's hulking, armor-clad form looming in the doorway, a weasel-bunny attached to his nose by the teeth.  
  
Trying very, very hard indeed not to laugh as she did so, Dagger climbed to her feet and pried the little creature off of the knight's nose, which she then proceeded to heal.  
  
"Hmph!" Steiner exclaimed, quite offended amidst the laughter of everyone in the room, save for Amarant, Raff-Riff, and the less humorously inclined portraits gazing down on the merry little scene from the walls. "Beatrix would never laugh at me!"  
  
"That's what you think!" a familiar voice called out from somewhere, snickering slightly.  
  
"Beatrix?" Dagger asked, scratching her head.  
  
"Yes, my queen," the voice replied.  
  
"I must say, I'm very impressed with your lung capacity," the young Alexandrian ruler commented, shaking her head in disbelief. "Not everyone could make themselves heard all the way from Alexandria."  
  
"You're too kind, Your Highness."  
  
"Hmph! Unlike some other people, who think nothing of laughing at those in pain," Steiner muttered pointedly.  
  
"Oh, cut that out, Adelbert," Beatrix's voice implored. "You know I love you. You just looked too adorable with that...thing hanging from your nose."  
  
"Weasel-bunny," Freya added helpfully.  
  
"Flying, polka-dotted weasel-bunny," Amarant corrected, less for the sake of being helpful than for showing the rat plainly that she didn't know everything.  
  
"Yes, one of those," Beatrix's voice agreed, laughing softly again. "I'll see you soon, Adelbert?" she continued hopefully.  
  
"Yes, just as soon as we can get Amarant and Freya un-handcuffed and make our way back to Alexandria," Steiner told her fondly, completely missing the frantic waving of both parties involved not to reveal this embarrassing situation to anyone else.  
  
"I hate you, Steiner," Amarant muttered.  
  
"I thought you hated everyone," Freya said airily.  
  
"Shut up," he growled.  
  
However, it seemed that luck was finally beginning to hesitantly creep over to their side, as Beatrix gave no sign that she had heard them, falling silent at last.  
  
"Th-that was weird," Vivi commented, quite summing up the feelings of all the readers.  
  
"I quite agree, my dear small fellow," Leander said, smiling beatifically at everyone seated around the table. "At any rate, shall we have dinner now?"  
  
"Yeah!" Zidane agreed heartily. "I'm starving!" Then he leaned over. "And anyway, we've gotta get our energy up for tonight," he murmured to Dagger, grinning wickedly as she blushed brightly.  
  
Leander smiled indulgently at both of them.  
  
"I suppose you must all be tired from your...search?"  
  
"Yeah," Zidane sighed. "I didn't think it'd be so hard."  
  
"My dear boy," Leander chuckled. "Did you really think I would just leave the most important, rare, and powerful book in existence lying out where anyone could find it? Certainly not. It is necessary that the one who comes to be the book's next owner first prove himself by...finding...it."  
  
He trailed off, frowning at the utterly confused expressions of six weary travelers.  
  
"What book?" Dagger asked slowly.  
  
"Why, the Mrin Codex, naturally! The prophecies within this priceless volume are certainly not accessible to just anyone, but the man who is able to locate it within this house clearly possesses the skills to decipher what would seem to anyone else the ramblings of a madman."  
  
"Speaking of the ramblings of a madman," Amarant muttered to Freya.  
  
"Now, now, let's see exactly where he's going with this," she muttered back.  
  
He glared down at her.  
  
"I can see where he's going with it. The damn innkeeper's sister isn't here. Which means we have to go look for her. Which means we're stuck in these damn cuffs even longer."  
  
"Yes, I do see your point," Freya sighed.  
  
Leander watched this exchange, reflecting suspiciously that something seemed to be wrong.  
  
"Er, Zidane," he began slowly, "you ARE here to seek the Mrin Codex, are you not?"  
  
"Sorry, man. I don't even know what that is," the fair-haired young man replied apologetically.  
  
What?!" their host exclaimed, losing his air of unflappable composure at last. "This whole time, you never bothered to tell me that you weren't looking for the book?!"  
  
"You didn't exactly give us a chance, Mr. 'Ooh, I'm One Big Enigma!'" Zidane shot back sulkily.  
  
The tall, thin man looked devastated for a moment, then sighed.  
  
"So, what ARE you looking for?"  
  
"Is there an innkeeper here?"  
  
"A...who?"  
  
Zidane rolled his eyes and tried again.  
  
"An innkeeper."  
  
"Not that I know of," Leander replied thoughtfully. Then an evil smile spread itself across his face. "However, who is to say how many have become hopelessly lost within these walls?"  
  
"Right," Zidane sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Well, if there's nothing else, I guess we'll-"  
  
Here, Zidane was interrupted by a pounding at the front door of the manor. Without a word, Raff-Riff bustled off to answer it. Or perhaps 'slogged' is a better word than 'bustled.' For there was nothing bustling about Raff- Riff's movements, as there seldom tended to be.  
  
At any rate, whatever it was he was doing, he did it until he reached the door.  
  
"Good evening!" the voice of a woman floated into the dining room when Raff- Riff had presumably opened the door. "Might I borrow a cup of sugar? My brother's staying with my husband and I, and I thought I'd bake some muffins. He's rather low in spirits, after all, with his tavern having just been blown sky-high by a tiny redheaded sorceress."  
  
"Poink!" went Zidane's ears as they stood up on end.  
  
"WAAAAAAIT!" Zidane and Steiner howled in unison as they bolted as one from the dining room.  
  
Suppressing a sigh, Dagger climbed to her feet and ran after them.  
  
Grumbling, Amarant stood and stalked from the room.  
  
Suppressing a startled noise, Freya went with him.  
  
Vivi simply blinked in adorable confusion.  
  
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"Hi!" Zidane was meanwhile greeting the stoutish elderly woman standing awkwardly in the grandly decorated front hall while Raff-Riff was off seeking the necessary dextrose sweetening crystals. "Uh, we couldn't help but overhear that you've got a brother who owns a tavern. Or, at least, pieces of what used to be a tavern."  
  
"Why, yes! Yes, I do," the woman beamed back at him, patting a stray wisp of grey back into the soft bun resting at the back of her neck.  
  
"She's a little too happy about her brother's livelihood having just been blown sky-high, if you ask me," Dagger murmured to Freya. "I don't know if I trust her."  
  
"Maybe she's just uncomfortable around new people and over-compensates by smiling too much?" Freya suggested.  
  
"Or maybe she's just damn loony, just like everyone else we've met in the last few days," Amarant grumbled.  
  
"That could very well be," Dagger agreed sadly.  
  
"Oh, that's terrible!" the woman was meanwhile exclaiming in horror. "You poor children, joined at the wrist like that!"  
  
'Those poor children' exchanged uncertain glances.  
  
"Uh, thanks, I guess," Amarant shrugged.  
  
"Yes, it HAS been a hardship," Freya sighed as Amarant crossed his arm and leaned against something - her. Rolling her eyes, she shoved him off, and then gave a frightened squeak as he toppled to the ground and, predictably, took her with him.  
  
"Geez, are you two at it again?" Zidane snickered. "You're worse than, like, Steiner and Beatrix!"  
  
"Bite your tongue, Zidane!" Steiner admonished. "Beatrix is a lady, and I treat her as such!"  
  
"Do you think this would be a bad time to tell him about the picture she took of him while he was getting out of the shower - before he could get all that armour back on?" Zidane muttered to a wildly giggling Dagger.  
  
"I think so," she replied. "That wasn't very ladylike of her, was it?"  
  
"Nope," Zidane grinned before turning back to the woman, who had watched this exchange rather bewilderedly. "So, would it be, like, a big problem if we all came with you to talk to your brother?"  
  
"Certainly, you're welcome to come with me! The more, the merrier!" she chirped.  
  
"We're all gonna end up sharing one bed, aren't we?" Amarant muttered to Freya.  
  
"If so, I vote that we just give it to Zidane and Dagger and be done with it," she muttered back. "I'd rather spend the evening in a haystack than with those two in the same bed."  
  
"The name's Margie, by the way," the innkeeper's sister was meanwhile saying. "Now, shall we be off? My husband and I just live down the hill, but the hill is awfully long."  
  
"Alright!" Zidane chirped, already bounding out of the house and down the long walkway.  
  
With a simultaneous sigh, Dagger, Steiner, Amarant, and Freya followed him. Then, halfway down the walkway, Steiner stopped.  
  
"Something's missing," he noted, frowning beneath his helm. "Something...little and blue and yellow. And just a little pointy. But whatever could it be? Ah, well. I'm sure it is just my over-active imagination, just like that earlier exchange with Beatrix." His eyes grew wide and shiny as he clasped his hands beneath his chin in girlish adoration. "Ah, how I miss you, my love..."  
  
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"U-um, Leander," Vivi spoke up hesitantly from his seat at the massive dining table. "Do you think they're coming back?"  
  
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Twenty minutes later...  
  
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"Geez, Vivi, we're sorry we forgot you," Zidane said fervently. "But why didn't you say something?"  
  
"Because I was inside, and you were all running for freedom," Vivi snapped back, for once too incensed to stutter.  
  
Zidane scratched the back of his head sheepishly.  
  
"Well, anyway, you've got to meet Margie. She's the innkeeper's sister we've been looking for. Margie, this is Vivi."  
  
Vivi suppressed a whimper of annoyance as Zidane picked him up by his hat and waved him before Margie's eyes.  
  
"Oh, what a little sweetie! How could they forget a cute little thing like you? Poor child. Ah, well. Don't you worry. Margie'll whip you up a cup of tea right as soon as we get home," the elderly woman assured him, moving to pinch his cheek, but not sure of exactly how to get to a cheek beneath that massive yellow hat.  
  
"Is that her cure for everything?" Zidane muttered to Amarant.  
  
"Think so. She offered you one after you walked into that cow."  
  
"And she offered one to Dagger for her headache after you walked into the cow," Freya added.  
  
"And she offered one to Steiner for his...affliction," Amarant added, smirking.  
  
"Oh, Beatrix, my love, I miss you so!"  
  
"And then," Freya said, feeling it safest to skip right over Steiner's unexpected outburst, "as if that weren't enough, she offered to pour a cup of tea over the handcuffs to see if they would come off that way. I still don't understand how she expected that to work."  
  
"Oh, well," Zidane shrugged. Then he pouted. "This is taking too long! Hey! I know! Let's skip to the next scene!"  
  
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And they all lived happily ever after, except for the Magical Mr. Mistoffeles, who is to this day in the afterlife, being teased mercilessly about his rhinestone-studded suit.  
  
The end.  
  
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"Uh...I think that's a little too far," Zidane noted, rubbing the back of his head, this time less sheepishly than dismayed at the true strangeness of the author. "How about we just skip the rest of this walk?"  
  
"Fine," Rhianwen pouted from the sky, and the next instant, a gigantic hand reached down and delivered a mighty power-flick to Zidane's backside, which sent him tumbling down the hill.  
  
"Hey!" Dagger shouted up at the sky. "Were you touching my Zidane's posterior, mysterious gigantic hand? If you were, you'd better watch it! I've got an Odin, and I'm not afraid to use him!"  
  
"Like he could hit me, anyway," Rhianwen scoffed. "He couldn't hit fish in a barrel."  
  
"Rrr!" Dagger growled. "First you grope my boyfriend, and then you disparage my Odin! Prepare to die! MEGA FLARE!"  
  
"Uh-oh. Odin may miss, but Bahamut don't," Rhianwen said in as butchered of grammar as ever English teacher cringed at, and the next moment, the hand withdrew back into the sky, to be seen no more.  
  
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Unfortunately, as Rhianwen was also the force behind the telling of this tale, the remarkably ill-fated Chapter 13 met its end here, forcing the mismatched band to fend for themselves the rest of the way down the hill, which they did, doubtlessly more successfully than they should have, had a narrator with a cruel streak been guiding them.  
  
Once at the bottom of the hill, they happened upon a slightly mangled Zidane. Steiner slung him roughly over his shoulder, ignoring the young man's squawk of pain, and they all trooped into the large farmhouse that Margie and her husband, whom, it had been discovered, was named Larry, occupied with their two children, four dogs, twenty-seven cats, and four very nervous canaries.  
  
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"Ooh..." Zidane groaned painfully as Steiner set him gently on the floor with a resounding thud.  
  
Dagger and Margie bustled over to supply healing spells and tea, respectively.  
  
It is safe to say that Zidane appreciated the latter much more, particularly as, when Dagger leaned over him to recite the healing spell, her...feminine charms, still with the flower tucked into the neckline of her blouse, brushed enticingly against his face.  
  
"Wow...thanks, Dagger," Zidane said gratefully. "I feel better already!"  
  
Dagger blinked, confused.  
  
"But...I haven't recited the spell yet!"  
  
"Oh! Uh, right. Heh-heh-heh..."  
  
'Nice save, buddy,' Zidane congratulated himself.  
  
'He's a twit,' Dagger reflected, smiling fondly down at Zidane, 'but I love him.'  
  
Both their internal monologues were the next moment interrupted by the peal of a dinner bell, and thus began, as everyone gathered around the dinner table, a peaceful, relaxing, and altogether delightful meal.  
  
Yeah, right.  
  
Tune in next chapter to see just how much Rhianwen is lying!  
  
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End Notes: Whew! Chapter 13! I, in my superstitiousness, was dreading the writing of this chapter. And my goodness, it was a silly one, even for this story!  
  
So, I know I've been promising this for quite some time now (at least the last four chapters), but I really will get back to the plot next time. For now, please review often and generously. ^_^ 


	14. Just Ignore Them

Chapter 14

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   "So," the innkeeper, who had earlier revealed his name to be Phil, sighed sadly and just a trifle theatrically as he glanced surreptitiously about the dinner table to see if everyone were properly touched by his suffering. He was rather disappointed to find that they weren't. "You wish to know about the night that my livelihood was destroyed? Well, it is a tale that serves well to illustrate the unpredictable nature of life. One moment, a person may have everything, and the next, it may be ripped away in a single, cruel, blow."

   "Oh, boy, he's mixing his metaphors," Zidane groaned quietly to Amarant. "This is going to be melodramatic."

   "And it's probably going to go on forever," Amarant added disgustedly, swatting a cat off of the back of his head. "Why do these damn things always know who hates them the most and pester them?"

   "Okay; let's make a deal," Zidane suggested after wincing at the frightened mewl of a cat who liked this whole 'flying' thing very little. "If he goes on for more than fifteen minutes, we jump at him and kill him."

   "I was thinking ten minutes, myself," Amarant admitted with a smirk.

   "Even better!"

   "Actually, Phil," Dagger interjected gently, tossing a glare in Zidane and Amarant's direction for their insensitivity to this man, "we just wanted to ask you if you knew who that little redheaded girl was and where she is now."

   "Oh," Phil said, rather put out by this. "Well, I don't know. I suggest you go to Lindblum."

   "Why? Did she say she was going there?" Freya asked, feeling quite left out of this conversation. This, however, did not annoy her nearly as much as the twelve cats that had surrounded her chair and sat, staring up at her with unblinking eyes of jade green, apparently fascinated.

   "No," Phil replied. "That's just where everyone goes eventually when they pass through our humble little town."

   "Wonderful," Dagger sighed, exchanging pained glances with Freya across the table.

   "Phil, are you SURE there's nothing more you know?" Zidane asked pleadingly.

   "Why, no, I don't believe so," Phil replied in honest confusion.

   "Are you REALLY sure?" Zidane pressed.

   "Yes, I'm really sure," Phil replied, even more bemused.

Zidane stood up from the table, drawing in a deep breath.

   "Would it jog your memory if...the royal house of Alexandria offered to rebuild your tavern for you?"

   "Zidane!" Dagger exclaimed, horrified.

   "No need to thank me for my great idea, Dagger," Zidane grinned at her. "Now, Phil, why don't you tell us what you need to know, and we can make arrangements to get your place built again?"

   "Someone please choke him before he offers this man all the money in the city," Dagger requested with a pained groan. Steiner's expression suggested that he would be all too glad to take Dagger up on the request, but refrained for fear of those pesky murder laws that tended to haunt a man's future forever afterwards, cropping up at the most inconvenient times, completely erasing a man's chances of working his way higher up the ziggurat.

   "Young man, I honestly don't know what you're talking about," Phil spoke up hesitantly. "I was being entirely truthful when I said I knew nothing about where that demonic redheaded woman-man was going next."

The clatter of a fork falling to a plate followed.

   "D-d-demonic?" Vivi repeated nervously.

   "Woman-man?" Amarant repeated, less nervous and more confused.

   "Hey, you saw her, didn't you?" Zidane snickered. "There wasn't really much of a body there. Now, the shorter girl – the one in white – that's a figure! When she grows up, she's gonna have huge-"

   "On behalf of all women everywhere, Zidane," Freya interrupted wearily, "shut up."

   "What'd I say?" Zidane wondered in honest confusion.

   "Well, judging a girl's looks completely based on her…size, for one thing," Dagger said angrily, shooting him as deathly a glare as she possibly could…which wasn't particularly deathly.

   "I was just saying! I can see where the woman-man nickname came from," Zidane chuckled.

   "Oh, never mind," Dagger exclaimed, quite exasperated. "So, Phil, you think that the sorceress is most likely going to Lindblum?"

   "Sorceress?" Phil repeated, scratching his head, the motion causing light to reflect off of his watch just so, providing a good deal of amusement for one of the family cats who was rather fond of chasing light spots.

   "Sorry," Dagger sighed. "You think the demonic redheaded woman-man will be going to Lindblum?"

   "Oh, her! Well, it seems almost certain to me," Phil said with a shrug.

   "My Queen, it seems to me that it is the only lead we have right now," Steiner spoke up, trying to ignore the canary perched on the top of his helm and the three cats leaping madly at it every now and again, but missing and simply crashing head-first into his back, which accounted for the clangs that sounded through the room every few minutes.

   "I think Steiner's right," Freya hastened to add, eyeing the twelve cats who were still watching her intently, and who now had a somewhat…hungry look about them. "We should at least try Lindblum. And honestly, the sooner, the better, right?"

   "Well!" Dagger chirped, glancing across the table strangely when the canary perched atop Steiner's head chirped back. "It's all settled then! We'll leave for Lindblum this evening!"

At this, Margie looked up sharply. 

   "You most certainly will not! The sun has been down for nearly an hour, and you can't travel through strange country after dark! You'll all be our guests for the night."

   "Margie!" Larry hissed. "Where exactly d'you think we're going to put them all?"

   "Well," Margie replied, frowning, "I thought maybe we could have the boys sleep out in the hayloft-"

   "All right!" the boys in question exclaimed, recalling that the barn was where their father tended to keep his whiskey supply.

   "-so the young lady and the child can share Pete's room, and then the knight and the young fellow with the tail can share Randy's. As for the two in the handcuffs-"

   "I don't want a girl in my bed!" Pete protested, looking askance at Dagger. "I might get girl-cooties!"

   "And you wonder why you're a twenty-four year old virgin," Randy snickered, giving his older brother a poke in the ribs.

   "Heh-heh-heh," Dagger laughed nervously. "Please, Margie, don't go to any trouble. The six of us will sleep in the hayloft, if that's all right with you."

   "Oh, sure. They just want the booze," Pete muttered resentfully.

   "I wouldn't hear of you spending the night in that drafty hayloft!" Margie exclaimed, alarmed. "We've more than enough room in the house for all of you, if a few of you don't mind taking a floor."

   "Not at all," Steiner hastened to assure her.

   "So, we get the hayloft?" Pete asked hopefully.

---------------------------------------------

Several minutes later, the group reached a state of agreement that Dagger and Vivi would take Pete's bed, much to the annoyance and chagrin of Zidane, that same Zidane would share Randy's bed with Steiner, and Freya and Amarant would sleep in the hayloft with Pete and Randy. The reason for this last decision was threefold. The first 'fold', as it were, was the insistence of both Amarant and Freya, who had learned earlier that week that sharing a bed with a person while chained to them isn't nearly so easy as one might imagine, and can in fact be quite hazardous, should one be particularly prone to tossing and turning. The second was due to Margie's insistence that a young lady (a description that provoked in Freya the indescribable urge to grit her teeth and a general dislike of farmers' wives everywhere) should not share a bed, unchaperoned, with a young gentleman (the description of which caused everyone around the table to snicker uncontrollably, minus Freya, who was too busy gritting her teeth over the implications of Margie's words, and Amarant, who was still trying to figure out who the hell this woman was talking about when she spoke of this 'gentleman'). The third was Larry's concern that his liquor supply might be gone by morning. And _then_ how would he deal with the everyday doldrums of being a farmer?

Had Larry known what state of mind Amarant was in by this time, not to mention Freya, he might not have considered their presence in the hayloft to be quite the protection for his precious collection of beverages that he did.

Nevertheless, what was settled was settled, and the temporarily expanded family returned their attention to their meals.

For a time, at least.

   "Hey, pass the potatoes, would you, Amarant?" Zidane requested, outwardly engrossed in devouring the meal set before them by Margie, but inwardly cackling with glee. The meal, he reflected, had been going altogether too well for everyone.

Amarant, being both inwardly and outwardly engrossed in devouring the meal once he had accustomed himself to doing so with only one hand, complied without a thought and lifted the large brown earthenware bowl toward Zidane. 

The result of this manoeuvre proved that there is indeed justice in the universe for those who go out of there way to cause hardship, or at least irritation, to others for their own amusement.

Freya had chosen the precise moment that Amarant had lifted the bowl to pick up her mug of Margie's piping hot peppermint tea, and when Amarant began to pass the bowl to Zidane, the chain of the handcuffs stretched taut with such a force that the entire contents of Freya's mug shot past Amarant's nose and directly into the face of the unfortunate (but highly deserving) Zidane, who had turned slightly to watch the carnage unfold.

   "ARGH! IT BURNS!" he howled, leaping from the table and upsetting his own mug in Steiner's lap.

   "Oh, no! I must get the tea out of my armour before it rusts!" Steiner exclaimed in dismay, leaping from the table and darting past Zidane, who was by now running in crazy circles about the kitchen, into the other room.

   "Why?" Dagger whimpered, gazing imploringly at the turnips on her plate.

The turnips had no answer for her, being turnips rather than people, or any other creature that possesses the ability to answer vague philosophical question. Elves, for example, or Qu's, dwarves, demihumans, Moogles, or enchanted rutabagas. 

Then, once it occurred to her that her dinner would be no help, she glanced up across the table at Freya, smiling to herself as she saw the other woman's mouth moving in a chant. She listened carefully.

   "Just ignore them…just ignore them…just ignore them…" 

And really, was this not the best advice to be offered when men were being…well, men?

------------------------------------------

   "Bye, Margie!" Vivi called in a fond farewell to his new friend standing on the front veranda of the trim, neatly kept, impeccably whitewashed farmhouse the next morning as the merry little band once again took to the road.

   "...tired," Zidane muttered sadly.

   "Stop your whining, monkey-boy," Steiner commanded, starting into a jaunty march and ignoring the strange looks and snickers of the farmers already out to work in the surrounding fields. 

Zidane lifted his head from Dagger's shoulder with a mighty effort, and glared scathingly at Steiner, which was doubtlessly considerably less effort.

   "Hey, man, it's your fault. You're the one who sang German folk-songs in your sleep all night."

   "Did he go into 'Gehen Sie zu mir, meine liebe Socke zurück' again?" Vivi asked, his tone laced with such sympathy that he forgot to stutter.

Steiner looked rather hurt.

   "Master Vivi, I thought you liked my singing!"

   "I-it's not that," Vivi hastened to assure him, shrinking sheepishly into his cloak. "I just have bad memories of that song."

   "Me, too," Dagger agreed emphatically.

   "Yeah, so do I, after last night," Zidane added, shuddering. "Who'd have thought Steiner would like to spoon?"

   "Eheh…yes, that thought alone has given me horrid memories of an already terrifying song," Freya announced, twitching slightly.

Amarant shrugged.

   "I still like it."

   "Good man!" Steiner beamed at him. "Surely, not everyone can appreciate the subtle charms of such a song!"

   "They must be very subtle, indeed," Freya muttered to Dagger, who nodded so emphatically that she nearly flipped over.

   "Hey," Vivi piped up tentatively. "If we're going to Lindblum, does that mean we'll get to see Eiko?"

   "Oh! Yes it does, Vivi!" Dagger agreed, brightening. "Surely Uncle Cid will agree to let us stay with him while we search for that girl."

   "Great," Amarant said flatly. "If the regent asks why we're like this, I'll kill him."

   "I'm sure Uncle Cid and Aunt Hilda are diplomatic enough to mind their own business," Dagger assured him.

   "Unfortunately, Eiko isn't," Zidane chuckled. "Have fun explaining what happened to a little girl who never quits asking questions, you two." 

   "She can't ask questions if I kill her, too," Amarant pointed out calmly.

   "Oh, come on. Do you honestly think you're intimidating with your little "kill-everything-that-moves" routine?" Freya demanded, quite exasperated.

He blinked, too startled to answer. This seemed to be everyone else's case as well.

   "Because you're not, you know," Freya continued airily. "You're coming across more as a spoilt little boy having temper tantrums than anything else."

   "Alright," he growled. "That's it."

With that, Amarant proved that the past few days had, indeed, affected his brain adversely, picked his impromptu Siamese – oh, I apologize; conjoined – twin by the arm and hurled her through the air.

We have seen this manoeuvre enough by now to know the result.

Once Dagger was finished casting a hefty healing spell for both of them, the party took once again to the road.

   "Do you feel better now?" Freya asked coolly as the two walked, side-by side naturally, several paces behind the rest of the group.

   "Much," Amarant replied just as coolly.

   "Good."

   "Good."

A pause.

   "I hate you, you know."

   "Good."

She sputtered helplessly for a minute.

   "Well, good!"

   "Yeah. Good."

   "I hate you."

   "I know."

Up at the front of the procession, Dagger whimpered painfully.

   "Why me?" she asked a dappled cow grazing in a nearby field, imploringly.

The cow, like her turnips the night before, had no answer for her, aside from "moo".

And, of course, a response of "moo" was of very little help to her. Thus did Dagger decide to "just ignore them" and enjoy the remainder of the walk, if such a feat should prove possible.

For the record, it wasn't.

----------------------------------------

End Notes: Okay; first things first. I'd like to start out with my typical beg for forgiveness for having taken so bloody long to continue this. Also, this was another very filler-esque chapter, but fear not! We seem to be almost at the point where the story rejoins the plot…if that makes any sense at all. Being a Rhianwen-ism, of course it doesn't make sense, but we'll ignore that for now, okay? Okay. ^_^

Tune in next time to see Eiko and Quina join the party, and Amarant have a grump-a-thon with Zelgadis! Maybe. Or maybe not. ^_^


	15. The World's Just Not Ready For QuinaAngs...

Chapter 15

--------------------------------------------

"What a trip," Zidane groaned painfully as he staggered through the massive gates of Lindblum Castle City, and collapsed in a betailed heap on the ground. "Remind me never to do that trip all in one go again. Ow, by the way."

"We will make certain to hold you to that," Steiner said, glaring at Zidane, trying unsuccessfully to massage his sore feet through his foot armour. 

"Agreed," Dagger said emphatically. "A whole week, without a single break?"

"Or a single bathroom break," a small, yellow and blue comet added in a voice remarkably like Vivi's as it shot past and into the nearest Lindblum Texico station.

"When did this place get gas stations?" Amarant wondered before promptly falling asleep and unfortunately not remembering to sit down before he did so.

"Ow!" Zidane whimpered as first Amarant and then Freya landed directly on top of him.

Wondering vaguely if this were a sign that fatigue had become too much for her, Dagger burst into a helpless fit of giggles once again. Really, this was much funnier than it should have been…

"Laugh it up, Dagger," Zidane croaked, his voice muffled by the pile of weary travellers. "I just hope you never have to go through it."

"You know, you three," she finally managed through her laughter, "you'd probably have a more comfortable nap at the Grand Castle than in the middle of a crowded street."

"Yeah, guys, she's right," Zidane called weakly from beneath his friends. "So, if you could just get up now, I'd really appreciate it. I like breathing."

"He's dead to the world, I'm afraid," Freya informed him mournfully, looking up briefly from the task of poking Amarant repeatedly in the side of the head.

"Cut it out," he muttered sleepily, batting at her hand.

"Well! That was a little disturbing! Help me out here, Zidane," Freya concluded, seizing Amarant's arm and trying to drag him off the betailed youth.

Zidane glared frostily up at her.

"And how am I supposed to do that when I can't move?"

"Just give him a shove!" Freya replied, exasperated.

"Would you like some help?" Dagger giggled.

Zidane laughed heartily, if a little wheezily.

"C'mon, Dagger! You're gonna help us? No offense, but I don't think you'll do much good."

Dagger froze and then turned slowly toward Zidane. She crouched down next to him.

"What exactly do you mean by that, Mr. Zidane?"

"Well…"

"Are you calling me weak?"

"Well…"

"Just wait! As soon as we're all a little better rested, you'll see just how weak I am!" she declared furiously before storming over to the pile of scrap metal that was Steiner. 

"I'm sure I will," Zidane grinned.

"Stop it!" she exclaimed almost tearfully. Then, calmly, she added, "By the way, I wasn't saying I'd help you myself. I meant I'd wake Steiner up to help you instead."

"At least that might do some good," Zidane snickered.

"You're mean!"

"Dagger," Freya called weakly. "Could you get Steiner woken up and over here quickly?"

Dagger turned, and then stared in bewilderment at the rather odd spectacle before her eyes.

Amarant had rolled over onto his back, thus pinning a very miserable Zidane to the ground even more fully. He had also apparently shaken his arm free of Freya's grip, and had then proceeded to fling it over her, thus pinning her effectively to him.

"He's begun to cuddle," Freya explained rather unnecessarily.

"And that bugs you? I'm surprised," Zidane cackled.

"Not being able to breathe does "bug" me a little, yes," Freya replied coldly.

With a sad shake of her head, wondering if they had come all this way only to meet their end during a particularly violent nap, Dagger knelt down next to Steiner, and shook his shoulder gently, creating a festively tambourinesque effect.

"Meine Lieblingskissen…" Steiner murmured sleepily, opening his eyes slightly. Then, as they lit on Dagger, he leapt to his feet, nearly knocking her unconscious with his shoulder. "Yes, Your Highness? What is it?"

Rather than answering in words, Dagger pointed mutely to the heap of travellers up against the brick arch leading into the city.

Steiner pondered the sight for a moment, his finger to his chin. Finally, his mind made up, he turned to Dagger.

"Do you think they know that they would be more comfortable sleeping somewhere else?"

-----------------------------------------------

The day was not going well for Quina Quen, most famous member of his tribe, if one asked the average video game enthusiast. He would never have thought that a lack of midday patrons would be a problem in a Lindblum tavern, but here he was, on his fifth day as a tavern manager, waiting idly for someone – anyone – to step in for a quick mid-morning bite or sup. Waiting as idly as he had the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that. 

Finally, with a sigh, he pushed off of the bar he had been leaning against and trundled into the back, where four very bored serving girls and three very bored Junior Chefs were gathered around a bucket of cold water – the closest thing to a water cooler they could manage – discussing the outcome of a new play that had swept through the city like wildfire, _Companions_. The story of seven young people living in a big city and trying to deal with the frustrations of everyday life and such issues as jobs, dating, and their own fights amongst themselves, was it any wonder that _Companions_ was a favourite among Lindblum's young adult population? 

"I just can't believe Toby ended up with Maria!" a pretty young brunette exclaimed.

"I know!" her friend agreed emphatically, adjusting her kerchief over her thick blonde braid. 

"I knew it from the start," one of the Junior Chefs, a lanky redheaded youth, said airily.

Both girls wheeled on him.

"You did not!"

"_How_ did you know?!"

"It was obvious," he said wisely.

Quina shook his head in annoyance, his tongue flapping from side to side as he did so, and would have told the boy blisteringly that anyone could predict the outcome of something after the fact, if he hadn't been fairly certain that this would start an argument of some sort that he frankly didn't feel like dealing with.

Instead, he cleared his throat.

"No customers now," he proclaimed. "Everyone take hour break. Come back half hour before lunch rush."

There was a panicked murmur from the workers.

"Break with full pay," Quina added, rolling his eyes as well as one could roll something vaguely resembling a pair of fried eggs.

"Whoo-hoo!" was the general consensus as a stampede for the door ensued. 

"Quina hired a bunch of shmucks," the Qu grumbled as the door of the tavern slammed shut behind the last of his employees. "What made Quina, unassuming small-marsh Qu, leave friendly big city of Alexandria and come to unfriendly bigger city to open tavern?"

He pondered this for a moment. Then he brightened.

"Ah! Quina remember! To make money, to buy food! Ah, food. Quina's true purpose." 

At this moment, he was distracted from further ponderings of the meaning of life by the bang of a door opening abruptly and emphatically. Quina's grin, which was essentially constant, could only widen, and widen it did, as four strangely garbed people entered.

_Customers! _

"Hey!" the first newcomer, a young girl of around fifteen or sixteen with masses of bright red hair greeted. "We've been travelling all day—"

"It's only the middle of the morning, Lina," the second newcomer, a man clad all in beige, his face hidden by a mask and hood that nearly met somewhere around his nose, reminded her grumpily.

"I know that! I thought we'd have made better time, or we would've stopped for breakfast at a house along the way! Well, mister," she continued, addressing Quina once again, "let's see some food!"

"Food Quina's specialty," Quina said jovially, starting off to the kitchen. He turned. "Please, you and friends make yourselves comfortable in Quina's humble establishment."

"Try not to eat this place out of business too, Miss Lina," a tiny girl of about fourteen clad in white and pink, with short dark hair, admonished as she followed the other two in.

"Remember who we're talking about, Amelia," a very tall man with long blonde hair sighed. "Food, food, food!" he added enthusiastically as the four took their seats.

---------------------------------------------

"Keep it coming, pal," the redheaded girl that the other three had called Lina mumbled between mouthfuls of a thick, rich soup. _This is pretty good, for a little place like this,_ she noted, surprised.

Quina peered curiously at her dish. 

"Why Quina's guest eating gravy by itself?"

Lina turned green for a brief second. Then she shrugged. Who cared what it was, if it tasted good?

"Never mind that! Just bring us…two more of everything."

"Quina pleased you enjoying our food," the Qu said, endeavouring to look modest as he surveyed the redhead and the blond man mowing through appetizers, main dishes, and desserts alike at a dizzying rate.

"Don't flatter yourself," the hooded, cloaked man in beige said, sipping delicately at a cup of coffee. "They would eat like this if it were raw and rolled in dirt."

"Quina…see," Quina said hesitantly. Then he turned. "Two more of everything, coming up!"

-------------------------------------------

"You let a magician handcuff you together?!" Eiko exclaimed, circling Amarant and Freya slowly, examining the handcuffs. "Why did you do that?"

"Ask Zidane," Freya suggested, glaring fiercely at that same boy, who had flung himself comfortably onto one of the plushy red couches that abounded in the guest apartments of Lindblum Grand Castle.

Eiko shrugged.

"Okay. Zidane, why did Amarant and Freya let a magician handcuff them together?"

"To be honest, Eiko," Zidane began with a mock-sigh, straightening up from his lounging position, "I don't really know. Grown-ups do strange things sometimes."

The little girl considered this for a long while. Then she turned to Dagger.

"Hey, Dagger, do you think it's something like when Papa Cid and Mama Hilda bought some handcuffs? They said that maybe it would help them be adventurous."

Dagger, who had been in the process of taking a sip of soothing hot cocoa that a concerned Hilda, seeing her on the verge of breakdown, had insisted she take, promptly experienced an abrupt and explosive migration of liquid by way of her nose. Coughing and sputtering in a most un-queen-like fashion, she shot Steiner a pleading glance. This was lost on the knight, who had been lost to the world for quite some time, snoozing blissfully where he had propped himself up against the wall.

Eiko gazed about her in confusion. Dagger was wiping hot chocolate off her face and inspecting her now stained blouse mournfully. Zidane was twisted into knots of wild giggles. Amarant and Freya were trying their hardest to kill him with a joint-effort-death-glare. Finally, realizing that it was no use looking to these silly grown-ups for answers, Eiko turned to Vivi.

"What's wrong with them?"

Vivi simply shook his head mournfully.

"They've been acting funny the whole way here. Hey, Eiko, do you know what Left Foot Yellow means?"

----------------------------------------------------

"Quina never seen anything like it," the Qu marvelled as the massive pile of food before the tiny redheaded girl and the tall blond man – the fifth Quina had brought out –dwindled to a pile of nothing.  

   "A light snack for them," the man in beige shrugged.

   "Their appetites almost as big as Quina's!"

At this fatal statement, time seemed to slow, and then teeter to a stop. 

The man in beige and the girl in white exchanged pained looks.

The blond man in blue continued to eat, noticing nothing.

The redhead, however, dropped the turkey she was in the process of chomping on, and lifted her head slowly to glare at Quina.

   "Is that a challenge?" she asked, eyes beginning to flicker dangerously.

   "Quina would never embarrass his guests that way," Quina said soothingly. "No one can eat more than Quina."

   "Oh, really?" Lina asked sweetly.

   "Quina hate to brag…"

   "Sit down," Lina ordered. "Gourry, Zelgadis, Amelia, wait outside. This could get ugly."

   "But I'm still hungry," the blond man, Gourry, lamented.

   "Never mind, Mr. Gourry," the girl in white, Amelia, said soothingly. "Maybe we can find a different place."

   "You wasting time," Quina said airily as the three proceeded to scramble for the door.

   "Enough talk," Lina growled, wondering where this odd sense of déjà vu had come from. "Bring it on."

--------------------------------------------------------

   "And that's the whole story," Dagger finished sadly, readjusting her position on the big, soft blue cushion to which Eiko had directed her when they had entered the little girl's personal sitting room. 

Eiko blinked, silent for several moments.

   "So…tell me again how the Twister board fit in," she requested.

With an annoyed grumble, Dagger launched back into the tale.

When she had finished, Eiko once again blinked in a stunned silence.

   "So…is it something like when Mama Hilda and Papa Cid bought handcuffs?"

  "No!" an indignant Freya exclaimed from the wall that she had selected to lean against.

    "I think it's because you wanted to spend more time together," Eiko giggled.

   "And I think you'd better shut up fast," Amarant said calmly, the hair over his eyes nearly singeing from the sheer force of the glare he was aiming at the little imp stretched out across the frilled blue and white spread covering the massive bed on the other side of the room.

   "Hey!" Eiko exclaimed, frowning indignantly. "This is a girl-talk time! No boys allowed!"

   "Then why is Vivi here?" Dagger asked, indicating the behatted mage, who was shifting nervously from foot to foot, obviously ill at ease amidst all the lace, frills, and general "girliness". Strange; Eiko had never seemed that kind to him. But probably the decorating of the room hadn't been left to her.

   "Vivi's not a boy," Eiko explained with all the cool dignity of an outraged six-year old. "He's just Vivi."

   "Should I be mad?" Vivi wondered to himself.

   "But no other boys are allowed!" Eiko was meanwhile continuing.

   "Believe me, I wish I had a choice," Amarant grumbled.

   "Don't worry; I'll leave, too," Freya hastened to assure the little girl. "In fact, I think it's about time for me to be burying myself deep underground, never to emerge until life has stopped repeatedly slapping me with the rubber chicken of silly incident after silly incident."

   "Um…Freya?" Dagger began hesitantly, exchanging worried looks with Eiko. "Are you okay? You never used to mix metaphors. Or come up with new, completely stupid ones."

    "Oh, really?" Freya murmured, wondering if just being silent wouldn't have been a much easier option. Certainly, the chances of being questioned would have been less.

   "Yes! And you're becoming sulky and…really, kind of badass! And you keep leaning against things! I think Amarant's having a bad influence on you."

   "Believe me, Dagger, I agree wholeheartedly," Freya said emphatically.

   "Hey!" Amarant said angrily and just a wee bit reproachfully. "You're supposed to wait until I'm not in the room to say things like that."

   "Wonderful idea!" Freya exclaimed sarcastically. "Why don't you just step out for a moment, until we're done discussing you? Oh, hold on," she continued, holding up her wrist and staring at the handcuffs, pretending to notice them for the first time. "I guess you can't."

   "And you're getting bitter," Dagger added decidedly. "And not only that, but just the other day, you threatened to throw Amarant so far, he'd hit his own shadow."

   "Oh, come on!" Freya protested. "That was only after he threatened to jump on me and poke me with a big stick!"

   "Maybe it's not just _him_ influencing _you_," Dagger said mournfully, inwardly reflecting that this last statement of Freya's had sounded a good deal more suggestive than it should have, and once would have. _While we're on the subject of people influencing other people, I think I've been around Zidane too long._

--------------------------------------------------

   "Your Highness?" Steiner called tentatively, trying vainly to work the ache that came from sleeping up against a wall, from his neck and shoulders. "Master Vivi? Freya? Amarant? Monkey Boy?"

When, upon searching around the hallway for several minutes, he was still unable to find any of his elusive friends, or "party members", if you will, he pouted.

   "Why do I always get left behind?"

--------------------------------------------------

   "Man, am I glad to be out of there!" Zidane mused as he ambled through the theatre district of Lindblum. "I was sure I was gonna start laughing when Eiko asked all those questions. And then Amarant and Freya would kill me. Going for a walk seems a little safer."

Scarcely had Zidane spoken these fatal words when a large, white-and-red shape approached him. The figure's face wore a huge grin, but his gait was drooping and dejected-looking. Zidane's eyes widened in surprise.

   "Quina?!" 

At this, the Qu looked up.

   "Hi, Zidane," he replied sadly.

   "Hey, hey, hey, what's the matter, Tongue Man?" Zidane asked gently, steering Quina over to a bench at the side of the street.

   "Quina lost an eating contest."

   "Whoa," Zidane breathed in awe. "I don't even wanna see the horrific creature that out-ate you."

Quina's eyes narrowed at the memory of his humiliating defeat.

   "Little redheaded girl."

Zidane blinked.

   "Uh…a kid beat you in an eating contest?"

An instant later, as Quina broke into sobs, the blond wondered if he had said the wrong thing.

   "Aw, Quina, it's gonna be okay."

   "Nothing will ever be same again!" Quina wailed. "Quina having a crisis of identity!"

Zidane's left eye began to twitch slightly.

   "Okay, man, I understand that you're upset. But knock it off! The world just isn't ready for Quina-angst."

   "There the monster now," Quina growled, shooting a scathing glare at a short, slight figure making her way towards them, followed by three others.

Zidane looked up absently, and then, as it occurred to him exactly why a petite teenage girl, with long red hair, garbed in the clothes of a sorceress, and followed by a swordsman, a dark-haired girl in white, and some blue guy was significant to him, he looked again, and so abruptly that it took a few seconds for his eyes to catch up with his head.

   "Dude!" he exclaimed. "That's the girl that destroyed the tavern we were in! We've been looking for her, because we thought she might be able to get Amarant and Freya out of the handcuffs they've been stuck in for the last week!"

Quina blinked his twin fried eggs several times. Then…

   "Quina not want to know."

--------------------------------------------------

Author's Notes: Yes! The story seems to have _almost _caught up with the plot, which means the end should be nigh, unless things take another totally unexpected turn. 

[Glares at her extremely unmanageable characters]

Anyway, many apologies for taking so long, I hope to have the next bit up soon, and all that jazz. ^_^


End file.
